Showing posts with label Amnesty 2022. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amnesty 2022. Show all posts

Monday, February 14, 2022

My next random page from Amnesty to fisk is page 210. It coincidentally comes right after my last section.

Page 210 says:

ATTACKS AGAINST HEALTHCARE WORKERS AND MEDICAL FACILITIES
Over the years, Israel’s army has repeatedly targeted medical facilities during its military offensives. According to the NGO Medical Aid for Palestinians, 147 hospitals and clinics, and 80 ambulances, were damaged or destroyed in military offensives on Gaza between 2008 and 2017. In the same period, 145 medical workers – most of them ambulance drivers – were killed or injured.

Israel's targets are legitimate military targets. Sometimes they are Hamas hiding in medical facilities that Israel tries to verify are empty. 

Here are only a few examples of how Hamas uses medical facilities. Amnesty does not mention any of them.

Wafa hospital, where the IDF repeatedly ensured that no patients were there and that Hamas was firing from it:

 


Terrorists using an ambulance:


And again:


In the 2009 war, I categorized dead "medics" who were terrorists:


Azmi Abu Dallal. medic, was a member of the Nuseirat Battalion of the Al Qassam Brigades.
Ahmed Al-Khatib, nurse, was a field commander of the Popular Resistance Committees.
Mohammed Abu Hassir, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades:

Ihab ‘Umar Khalil al-Madhoun, physician, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Yaser Kamal Shbeir, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Anas Fadel Na'im, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades:

Ra'afat Sami Ibrahim, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades.His obituary says that he had been responsible for firing rockets at Israel.
Issa Abdul Rahim Saleh, physician, planted explosives and acted as a spotter for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Abdullah Sa'id Saleh al-'Imawi, nurse, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades who specialized in armor. He also fought in the Fatah coup. He was killed together with his squad leader, Tareq Fadel Abdullah Ja’afar.
Ihab Jaser Ahmed al-Sha'er, physician, was an apparent fighter ("mujahid") for the Al Qassam Brigades.

Hamas also used ambulances to transport terrorists many times in that war.

Shifa Hospital is the de facto Hamas headquarters. It was reported by journalists before Hamas threats to punish them.




There was a Hamas sniper position on the tenth floor of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society building in 2014.

Hamas booby-trapped an UNRWA medical clinic, and blew it up when IDF soldiers entered.

Amnesty categorized these three Islamic Jihad terrorists as innocent "ambulance drivers."

Here is the martyr poster for 'Aatef Saleh al-Zameli. Note that he is not wearing scrubs. He's in uniform. 



The name of the "nurse" killed was actually Yousef Ahmad Sheikh al-Eid. Here is his Islamic Jihad martyr poster:


The "paramedic" Yousef Jaber Darabih was also a proud member of the jihadist terror group:


Amnesty's not mentioning how Hamas and Islamic Jihad use medical locations and equipment as covers for terrorism is a highly relevant fact that Amnesty is purposefully omitting in order to demonize Israel and whitewash Hamas/Islamic Jihad crimes.

Does that sound objective to you?








Sunday, February 13, 2022

Today's analysis of a random page of the Amnesty "apartheid" report is for page 207.

This section of the report  (pages 204-210) is called "Cruel and arbitrary restrictions on access to healthcare in the OPT." 

This page is  about how Israel sometimes denies or delays patient requests by Gazans or their companions to travel to Israeli or Palestinian hospitals.

This section did not have any provable lies. But it has a complete disregard for the truth.

It does not mention a single reason why Israel might place restrictions on patients or alleged patients leaving Gaza. 

In 2004,  a 22-year-old Palestinian mother of two named Reem al-Reyashi faked a limp as she blew herself up at the Erez crossing from Gaza, killing 4 people. 

In 2005, Wafa al Bass attempted to smuggle a suicide belt into Israel which she intended to use at the Israeli hospital where she was being treated for burns. 

In 2006, a member of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) who had received an entry permit into Israel on humanitarian grounds was arrested at the Erez Crossing. He planned to establish terrorist cells in the West Bank.

In 2007, two female suicide bombers at the Erez Crossing who received authentic entry permits into Israel using false medical information were arrested. They planned to carry out a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv and in Netanya.

In 2017, two sisters who had permission to enter Israel - one of whom had cancer - were caught trying to smuggle explosive material at the Erez crossing.

Hamas has used Gaza ambulances to transport terrorist leaders to Egypt, so Gaza ambulances must be thoroughly checked.

The Shin Bet has discovered "time after time [Hamas] attempts to pass funds and/or instructions to terrorist elements in the West Bank via Gaza residents entering Israel and even seriously ill patients." It also says that  senior medical officials in Gaza were involved in issuing falsified medical certifications,"In some cases, the passage of imposters to Israel was done in an ambulance."

The also doesn't mention how many times Egypt denies permits to Gaza patients. Hundreds of Gazans are denied entry to Egypt every month even after they go through the process of getting permits, which indicates that Egypt is also concerned about terrorism infiltration. 

Perhaps the most egregious part of this section was this image of empty pharmacy shelves in Shifa Hospital from 2017:


No context was given, but since it is in the section of the document about Israel's "cruel and arbitrary restrictions on access to healthcare" it is assumed that Israel had denied the passage of medicines into Gaza. 

But Israel never denies medicine to Gaza. 

This photo was taken when the Palestinian Authority decided to strangle Gaza's medical infrastructure during one of its political battles with Hamas. This included denying medical permits. And Amnesty knows this, because it reported about it in its 2017 annual report:

The Palestinian government based in Ramallah imposed several punitive measures against Gaza in a bid to pressure the Hamas administration to give up control of Gaza. These measures impeded the civilian population’s access to medical care, essential services including water and electricity, and education. This contributed to violations of the rights to health, an adequate standard of living, and education.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in March the West Bank authorities suspended the payments for transfers of people in need of medical treatment outside Gaza, delaying the referrals of some 1,400 patients. NGOs reported that procedural delays resulted in the deaths of several patients, including babies. The UN reported delays in the transfer of essential medicines and medical supplies to hospitals in Gaza, affecting patients’ long-term health.

Yet these six pages do not mention the words "Hamas" or "Egypt" or "Palestinian Authority" or "terror" once. No, Amnesty is hell bent on denying any context and any indication that Gaza medical woes are not entirely because of fictional "Israeli apartheid." 

Amnesty knows the truth damned well. And it goes out of its way to ensure that its readers do not know that truth. 

Yes, it is possible to lie without saying a single verifiable falsehood. This section of the report proves this.






Friday, February 11, 2022

I've been picking out random pages of the Amnesty report to see if I can find a lie or deception on every page of Amnesty's latest "apartheid" report.

I spun the wheel of the random number generator chose Page 191 is my next target.


Here is the beginning of that page:
Stone quarrying is Palestinians’ largest export industry, but Israel’s control of the OPT has restricted Palestinian access to these resources. In addition, Israel has refused to grant permits for new Palestinian quarries or to renew existing licences.[1047]  Meanwhile, Israel carries out quarrying activities in the OPT, in contravention of the law of occupation.
That sentence seems to say that Israel refuses to grant permits to any new Palestinian quarries or renew their licenses as it takes over the quarries.

Footnote 1047 adds a crucial piece of information:
 [T]he Israeli Civil Administrations fail[ed] to renew or grant new permits for Palestinian quarries in Area C since 1994.
Israel isn't restricting quarrying in the areas that Palestinians control - at all. Nor can it, under the terms of the Oslo Accords.

Amnesty is giving the impression of "occupation" when Israel allows full freedom for Palestinians to self-rule in the areas under their control. 

Now, why might it restrict quarrying in areas that it is responsible for? Perhaps because Palestinian quarrying, while important to the Palestinian economy, is destroying the environment:

The environmental economics as related to pollution trend caused by SMI [stone and marble industry]  is considerably high. This is in terms of the damages and adverse impacts caused by SMI to the environment, public health, and green cover. This can be attributed to the lack of control and monitoring system on the industry, and due to the lack of law enforcement. This requires from the Palestinian ministries and institutions in charge to undertake an evaluation of such damages and impacts resulted from the air, water, soil, and noise pollution caused by SMI. ....While the evidence from environmental and health points of view shows that pollution caused by SMI imposes an economic cost to the Palestinian society, urgent steps should be taken to control the sources of pollution originated from SMI. However, if nothing would be done to improve the industry, with respect to its laws and regulations, as well as to short-term and long-term strategies, the SMI’s impacts will be devastating.  
Is Israel supposed to allow this pollution to be spread in areas under its control? Arguably, even as an "occupier," it has a responsibility to ensure safety regulations and control. And no Palestinian quarry would want to be working under Israeli regulations.

So this is a lot different than Amnesty made it look. Yes, one can interpret the phrase "Israel has refused to grant permits for new Palestinian quarries or to renew existing licences" as not to mean "all," but unless someone takes the time to look at the footnotes, the impression given is of a complete takeover of the industry by Israel. And as we've seen in other pages, Amnesty is actively trying to create that misconception while giving itself wiggle room that the sentence could have meant "some." 

Amnesty claims it worked on this document for four years. They chose this language deliberately to deceive. 





Thursday, February 10, 2022

I'm fairly certain I can find at least one lie on every page of Amnesty's report accusing Israel of apartheid.

Today I chose to look at page 111:
Palestinians in East Jerusalem are neither able to participate in political life in Israel nor in the West Bank.
OK, let's see the proof:
Although they can vote and run in municipal elections in Jerusalem, they have traditionally boycotted them in protest at Israel’s ongoing occupation and illegal annexation annexation of East Jerusalem [468],and they remain excluded from national elections. 
So they can vote in municipal elections - and boycott them instead. And this is Israel's fault, exactly, how?
Empty polling location in Arab neighborhood

Most of them are excluded from national elections - the ones who don't become citizens. It wouldn't make sense for non-citizens to vote in national elections! And most of them refuse to become Israeli citizens. So, again, their own decisions are what stops them from full participation in Israeli political life - and Amnesty blames Israel.

Now, let's look at that footnote 468 referred to in the quote above, from  2018 article in Foreign Policy. It says something that Amnesty doesn't want you to know:

In July, Aziz Abu Sarah, 38, a Jerusalem entrepreneur who co-owns MEJDI, a tour group providing “dual narrative” (Palestinian and Israeli) tours of Israel and the West Bank region, was the first to present his candidacy for mayor. He ran as head of the Our Jerusalem party he founded.

But after a few months, Abu Sarah dropped out of the race. ...He was frightened by threats of violence against himself and his family—and it was coming from other Palestinians.

“At a press conference, I was pelted with eggs. On the street, thugs were harassing my family. My character was assassinated on social media, and the mainstream Palestinian press refused to even mention my name, let alone defend me,” he recounts. “I was called a traitor and a collaborator. I had to drop out.”

Makes perfect sense if you are a bigot.
Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities prevent any Palestinian political presence, including campaigning, in East Jerusalem, and have opposed Palestinian general elections being held in the city, despite this being guaranteed under the Oslo Accords. 
A number of Palestinians of Jerusalem will vote in the elections through services rendered in post offices in Jerusalem, in accordance with the capacity of such post offices.

...
(1) Those Palestinians of Jerusalem who will vote in the elections through post offices in Jerusalem shall be notified of the relevant post office by Electoral Registration card provided by the CEC (hereinafter "the electors").
(2) On arrival at the post office, electors shall identify themselves to the relevant postal personnel (hereinafter "the personnel") and present their Electoral Registration card.
(3) The personnel shall provide the electors with the following:
   (a) two ballot papers, one for the election of the Ra'ees, and one for the election to the Council; and
   (b) two envelopes addressed to the DEO.
(4) The electors shall mark the ballot papers at the post office counter, then place them in the envelopes to be inserted in receptacles, the size and shape of which shall be agreed between the two sides.
(5) At the end of the day, the receptacles shall be promptly delivered to the office of the relevant DEO. Such delivery shall be open to international observers. These receptacles shall be sealed prior to delivery.
(6) The DEO shall be responsible for the counting and totaling of votes cast through the arrangements set out above as part of the total election count.

In other words, they are putting absentee ballots in post offices where they are secured and delivered to  district election offices in the territories. And for those who insist on voting in person at an actual polling location, they can travel not very far to go there. 

Israel didn't stop elections in Jerusalem under Oslo rules. Abbas insisted allowing full voting sites in Jerusalem, and canceled the elections using the excuse that Israel wouldn't allow it.

Abbas wanted to go against Oslo - not Israel.

Amnesty lies. 

These are hardly the biggest lies and misrepresentations of the truth in Amnesty's document. After all, I just picked one page. 

But if it was so easy  to prove "apartheid," why does Amnesty have to twist the facts so much?

(To choose my next article on the report, I'll use a random number generator to choose the page.)






Tuesday, February 08, 2022

I decided to choose a random page of the Amnesty International's "Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians" report, just to see if I can find dishonesty on every page.

Pretty much.

On page 73, Amnesty says:

Palestinians on the other hand are treated by the Israeli state differently based on its consideration of them as having a racialized non-Jewish, Arab status and, beyond that, as being part of a group with particular attributes that are different from other non-Jewish groups. With respect to Palestinian citizens of Israel, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially classifies them as being “Arab citizens of Israel”, an inclusive term that describes a number of different and primarily Arabic-speaking groups, including Muslim Arabs (this classification includes Bedouins), Christian Arabs, Druze and Circassians. However, in public discourse, Israeli authorities and media generally refer only to Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs – those who generally self-identify as Palestinians – as Israeli Arabs and associate them with Palestinians living in the OPT and beyond, using the specific terms Druze and Circassians for those other non-Jewish groups. The authorities also clearly consider Palestinian citizens of Israel as a single group different from Druze and Circassians since they exempt this group alone from military service in “consideration for their family, religious, and cultural affiliations with the Arab world (which has subjected Israel to frequent attacks), as well as concern over possible dual loyalties.”[206]

First of all, most Israeli Arabs do not call themselves Palestinian. A 2020 JPPI survey showed that 51% of Israeli Arabs identify as "Arab-Israeli" and another 23% simply call themselves "Israeli." Only 7% call themselves Palestinians. 






In this world of wokeness where people are supposed to respect how others refer to themselves, Amnesty is decidedly barbaric.

Footnote 206 is from the Israel's Foreign Ministry. Amnesty is implying that Israel purposefully keeps a separate policy for Israeli Arabs and the Druze/Circassian communities because of fears of dual loyalty, and that this distinction proves Israel is discriminating against Israeli Arabs because they are "Palestinians."

Here is the bolded quote in context:

Since Israel's establishment (1948), Arab citizens have been exempted from compulsory service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) out of consideration for their family, religious, and cultural affiliations with the Arab world (which has subjected Israel to frequent attacks), as well as concern over possible dual loyalties. At the same time, volunteer military service is encouraged, with some choosing this option every year. Since 1957, at the request of their community leaders, IDF service has been mandatory for Druze and Circassian men, while the number of Bedouin joining the career army voluntarily increases steadily.
Amnesty is trying to paint this as proof of official Israeli discrimination. The actual quote shows that Israel's treatment of different groups aligns with how they want to be treated. And Arabs who want to take advantage of the social benefits of army service are perfectly free to do so.

The truth is the exact opposite of how Amnesty is trying to paint it. 

The MFA article is worth reading. It is far more accurate than Amnesty's description of Israel. It honestly notes the problems that Arabs have in a majority Jewish society, and it emphasizes how Israel is trying to improve things - details that Amnesty doesn't want its readers to know.

Here is the truth, and Israel doesn't lie about the real issues about full equality:

Arab citizens, who constitute more than one-sixth of Israel's population, exist on the margins of the conflicting worlds of Jews and Palestinians. However, while remaining a segment of the Arab people in culture and identity and disputing Israel's identification as a Jewish state, they see their future tied to Israel. In the process, they have adopted Hebrew as a second language and Israeli culture as an extra layer in their lives. At the same time, they strive to attain a higher degree of participation in national life, greater integration into the economy and more benefits for their own towns and villages.

Development of inter-group relations between Israel's Arabs and Jews has been hindered by deeply-rooted differences in religion, values, and political beliefs. However, though coexisting as two self-segregated communities, over the years they have come to accept each other, acknowledging the uniqueness and aspirations of each community.

Pluralism and Segregation:
As a multi-ethnic, multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-lingual society, Israel has a high level of informal segregation patterns. While groups are not separated by official policy, a number of different sectors within the society are somewhat segregated and maintain their strong cultural, religious, ideological, and/or ethnic identity.

However, despite a fairly high degree of social cleavage, some economic disparities and an often overheated political life, the society is relatively balanced and stable. The low level of social conflict between the different groups, notwithstanding an inherent potential for social unrest, can be attributed to the country's judicial and political systems, which represent strict legal and civic equality.

Thus, Israel is not a melting-pot society, but rather more of a mosaic made up of different population groups coexisting in the framework of a democratic state.

Amnesty justifies their disrespect for Arab Israelis with their hate for Jewish Israelis. 

Israel's strength is in respecting each ethnic and religious group and treating them as they themselves want to be treated, with an underlying framework of legal equality to protect them from the very thing that Amnesty is claiming Israel is guilty of. 

Israel's "mosaic" is more respectful of human rights than most Western societies are, who insist on homogenization. Obviously being a citizen brings with it responsibilities, but as I've noted, Israel's tolerance for Muslims far exceeds that of most Western European countries.

This one page, when read honestly, proves not only Israel's liberalism, but also Amnesty's illiberalism. 

Funny how the most "progressive" people are also the most intolerant.








Monday, January 31, 2022




Israel has existed for 73 years. During that time, the rights of the Arab citizens of Israel have only increased. They lived under military rule until 1966 and not thereafter.  Since then, while it has been slow, their rights as full citizens have been strengthened and supported by Israel's High Court. Today, they have unprecedented rights and have become successfully integrated in fields like medicine and high tech, and millions of shekels are earmarked to improve the lives of Arab Israelis. 

Palestinian Arabs lived under effective belligerent military occupation from 1967 until the Oslo process in the 1990s.  Since then, the vast majority of them have been living under full autonomy in Area A and Gaza, and partial autonomy in Area B, under their own governments. They also have more rights than they had before the 1990s.

Yet at the exact same time that Palestinian Arabs both within and without the territories have been gaining more rights, human rights groups like B'Tselem, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been steadily accusing Israel of worse and worse crimes.

Nothing makes that clearer than their recent jihad. During the course of a single year, each of those groups decided that Israel's treatment of Palestinians has crossed the line into being considered "apartheid."

And, amazingly, each of them - B'Tselem, HRW and Amnesty, whose report is being published Tuesday - relied on different and provably twisted legal analyses to reach this same conclusion. 

They didn't use that term in 1993. They didn't use that term in 2019. But now, suddenly, all three of them reach the same conclusion when there are more Arab rights under Israeli rule than ever before. (Even the Nation State law goes not say a word that contradicts the idea of equality under the law.) 

Put this together, and it is blindingly obvious that these three organizations deciding over the past year to label Israel as guilty of apartheid is not a coincidence. In each case, the decision to find Israel guilty was made first, and the lengthy, multi-page, laughably flawed "legal analysis" to justify it was written afterwards. 

In each case, counterexamples that prove that their fact-finding is biased and wrong is ignored or buried. 

In each case, the same arguments they use against Israel would find scores of nations worldwide far more guilty of the same crime, yet they are silent about those. 

So why are these purported human rights groups, who are still reluctant to call Chinese persecution of Uyghurs "apartheid," suddenly on the same page to make that accusation against Israel when they never did before?

I cannot know if there was any collusion to bring these three organizations to the same predetermined conclusion. Yet it does seem curious that these accusations follow Israel's historic normalization agreements with Bahrain, the UAE and Morocco. The Abraham Accords may have incentivized these groups who had relied on a solid Arab hatred of Israel as their reliable anti-Israel allies. When that dam burst, the "human rights" groups may have felt it was time to open up a new front against Israel to forestall Israel being treated by the world the same as its autocratic, human-rights violating neighbors. 

Whatever the reason for the timing of this choreography, there is an underlying theme between all three reports that points to the real goal for the "human rights" community: to claim that the concept of a Jewish state is itself a crime

The B'Tselem report concentrates its claims on the idea of "Jewish supremacy." Since that was largely decried as antisemitic, the other two reports mostly stayed away from that formulation (Amnesty prefers "Jewish domination.") But both HRW and Amnesty make it clear that they consider the very idea of a Jewish state to be the source of "Israeli apartheid," even when Israel's Declaration of Independence and numerous High Court rulings affirm the equality of all citizens. 

To all three, the entire raison d'être of Israel is immoral.  They aren't against apartheid - ask the Palestinians in Lebanon if they would gladly change places with the Palestinians under "apartheid" in Gaza or Ramallah or Jerusalem or Abu Ghosh. The word "apartheid" is simply a rhetorical weapon to attack Israel's very legitimacy as a place of refuge for Jews who are persecuted worldwide. 

These "human rights" NGOs are against Jewish statehood, Jewish self-determination, Jewish self-defense from antisemitic attacks and even peaceful, harmonious relations between the Jewish state and its neighbors. They want to set the calendar back to the days before 1948 when Arabs attacked Jews daily and Jews could not legally defend themselves.

Like all antisemitic movements throughout history, they justify their immorality and hate of Jewish human rights behind the lie of universal human rights.

In 1939, in the wake of Kristallnacht, the Wagner–Rogers Bill was proposed in the Senate to allow 20,000 Jewish children from Germany to immigrate to the United States. It did not even make it to a vote because of an antisemitic senator, Robert Rice Reynolds (D-NC.)

During hearings, one opponent of saving the lives of the Jewish children, Francis H. Kinnicutt of Allied Patriotic Societies, gave five reasons against allowing the Jewish children to be allowed to immigrate. His very first reason was:
On the humanitarian grounds on which all social agencies agree that children should not be separated from their parents and that foster parentage or institutional upbringing is prejudicial to children
Jewish parents in Germany would have been making the wrenching decision to save a remnant of their families by sending their own children away before things got even worse under Nazi rule, and Kinnicutt pretended that his immoral stance was based on his care about the welfare of the doomed children being taken away from their parents!

That is the kind of cynicism we are seeing from these so-called human rights groups today. They claim to care about universal rights, but when it comes to the human rights of Jews, they find "moral" reasons to oppose them. 

The Israel/Palestinian conflict is not about human rights for Palestinians, as these groups assert. It is about competing human rights for Jews and for Arabs. There is no perfect solution, but the optimal solution requires drawing the line that maximizes the rights for all and minimizes the violation of rights for all. 

History shows that no one besides Jews in a position of power will consistently defend the human rights of Jews, while lots of people - including Jews - will defend the human rights of those who want to take away the human rights of Jews. History also shows that Arabs under Jewish rule will always have more rights and more opportunities than Jews under Arab rule ever did or ever would. 

Which means that the Jewish state, with all its arguments and flaws and critics, is the optimal solution to maximize human rights for all. It will never be perfect, and there will always be people who are unhappy about the compromises needed to maximize rights for all, Jew and Arab. Yet the Jewish state  will always be better than the alternative that these human rights hypocrites are proposing - the dissolution of the Jewish state. 

Israel is the only guarantor of Jewish human rights - not the UN, not the ICC, not Amnesty or Human Rights Watch, and not even the US. These NGOs attack Israel's very existence as a Jewish state because they don't want Jews to enjoy the same human rights that everyone else has. B'Tselem's repeated use of the slander "Jewish supremacy" proves that.

That is the reason they all decided to get behind the Big Lie of "Israeli apartheid." They don't care about apartheid. Their goal is destroying the only state that can assure Jews will always have true political rights.







Sunday, January 30, 2022


In our last post, we discussed how an upcoming Amnesty International report is trying to copy other NGOs and declare Israel to be guilty of "apartheid." 

In order to do that, it realizes that concentrating on different laws for Palestinians in the territories is quite obviously not apartheid since they are not citizens. Amnesty must find - or manufacture - evidence of discrimination against Arabs in Israel that rise to the level of the definition of "apartheid" that it made up.

Like HRW, Amnesty realizes that it must trump up the idea that discrimination against Arabs in Israel rise to the level of oppression and persecution. So, like HRW, it has to cherry pick examples that would seem to indicate that level of discrimination, without mentioning counterexamples that disprove it.

Some examples:

Israel maintains Jewish domination over the Palestinian economy through the exclusion and intentional neglect of Palestinian communities inside Israel...

Yet Israel's largest Arab-majority city, Nazareth, is a high tech hub, hosting R&D centers from Amdocs, Microsoft, Broadcom and Salesforce. Nazareth hosts over 70 startups. Thousands of Arabs work in technology and the number is skyrocketing

If Israel intends to have Jewish dominance over the Arab economy by neglecting Arab communities, then why does it allow so many major companies to open up in Nazareth? 

Amnesty is lying. And they know it.
Whilst Palestinians largely refuse to join the Israeli army for national and political reasons, the exemption of Palestinian citizens of Israel from military service has resulted in their discriminatory exclusion from substantial economic benefits and opportunities guaranteed under Israeli law to those who have completed military service. 
And Haredi Jews who also choose not to join the army? Since they have the exact same social obstacles to joining the workforce, that proves that this has nothing to do with "Jewish domination."

Also, an increasing number of Arabs are volunteering for the army. Meaning that Israeli Arabs have the opportunity to gain the same social advantages that Israel's military-centric society provides. The discrimination is based on army service, not religion or national origins. It isn't apartheid.

Amnesty is lying. And they know it. 
In 2014, the Knesset raised the electoral threshold from 2% to 3.25%, primarily affecting parliamentary representation of Palestinians and other minority groups in Israel. Adalah and ACRI argued that raising the electoral threshold for parties to gain seats at the Knesset violated Palestinian citizens’ voting rights and enabled the disqualification of their candidates and parties. CERD also noted that raising the electoral threshold in Israel considerably weakens “the right to political participation of non-Jewish minorities”. 
Yet in the 2021 elections, not one Arab party fell below the 3.25% threshold - and about 25 "Jewish parties did. Which means the Arabs did not lose a single seat with the 3.25% threshold law.

The current government includes an Arab party in the ruling coalition,. Amnesty doesn't mention that because it contradicts its thesis of Israeli Arabs living under apartheid.

Amnesty is lying. And they know it. 
[T]he Ministry of Interior also requires children under the age of 12 of these “mixed couples” to be registered, with proof that Israel is their “centre of life”.397 According to the Society of St Yves, a legal support centre in East Jerusalem, from January 2004 to July 2013 the ministry received 17,616 applications for registering children of “mixed marriages”. Of these, 12,247 were approved and 3,933 were rejected. As a result, nearly 4,000 children live separated from at least one of their parents for bureaucratic reasons.
But if Israel approved 69% of those applications, doesn't it mean that those "bureaucratic reasons" have nothing to do with racism?

For Palestinian Bedouins living in the Negev/Naqab, accessibility of health services is even worse, as there are no medical clinics in most Bedouin villages.Israel does not provide healthcare facilities or medical services in unrecognized villages. These villages are not connected to public transport, forcing families to travel long distances to receive basic healthcare.

Name one country that provides medical clinics where residents build entire illegal communities on public land. 

In these and countless other cases in this long report, Amnesty is going out of its way to twist the facts to make Israel appear guilty. The decision that Israel is guilty of "apartheid" was made by HRW, B'Tselem and HRW way before they gathered any evidence. It was a pre-ordained conclusion and any facts that prove they have been dishonest in their information gathering is simply ignored or buried. 

It isn't an honest report about Israel. It is a hatchet job. And Amnesty knows that very few people will read it critically, because they assume that Amnesty is an honest broker. So later this week we will see Ap and Reuters and the New York Times give fawning coverage of this report, and not one mainstream reporter will take the time and effort to look at it critically.







Amnesty International is set to release a report this week that parrots Human Rights Watch's report of last year accusing Israel of apartheid.

As we have seen, HRW had to take bits and pieces of different international conventions to try to pretend that Israel's treatment of non-citizen Palestinians somehow fits under the definition of apartheid. Their main evidence that apartheid applies to groups beyond racial groups came from the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which did expand the definition of "racial discrimination" to include discrimination against national groups - but HRW did not quote the next paragraph of the ICERD which explicitly says "This Convention shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens."

Clearly, HRW was twisting the definition of apartheid in ways it was never meant to be defined, as the bulk of its arguments are based on how Israel makes distinctions between Israeli citizens and non-citizens, not between Jews and Arabs. 

Every nation on Earth gives fewer rights to non-citizens. 

I have seen a copy of Amnesty's embargoed report, and for the most part its arguments have the exact same flaws as HRW's. But they came up with another definition of apartheid under international law they claim says that discriminating against "national origin" is also apartheid.

And this definition is just as much a lie as  HRW's.

Amnesty's report  says:
The public international law prohibition of apartheid is best found in an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice relating to South Africa’s presence in Namibia (Namibia case), where the violation is defined as “distinctions, exclusions, restrictions and limitations exclusively based on grounds of race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin which constitute a denial of fundamental human rights”.
Wow! The ICJ defined apartheid in 1971? This changes everything!

Except that the phrase quoted by Amnesty says nothing about defining apartheid.

Here is what it says:
130. It is undisputed, and is amply supported by documents annexed to South Africa's written statement in these proceedings, that the official governmental policy pursued by South Africa in Namibia is to achieve a complete physical separation of races and ethnic groups in separate areas within the Territory. ...
131. Under the Charter of the United Nations, the former Mandatory had pledged itself to observe and respect, in a territory having an international status, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race. To establish instead, and to enforce, distinctions, exclusions, restrictions and limitations exclusively based on grounds of race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin which constitute a denial of fundamental human rights is a flagrant violation of the purposes and principles of the Charter. 

International law did not define the crime of apartheid in 1971. This ruling did not try to define apartheid in any sense.  South Africa freely admitted it had a policy of apartheid. The entire question before the IJC was whether South Africa's policies in Namibia were a violation of the UN Charter. 

Just like HRW, Amnesty realized that the definitions of apartheid under international law do not apply to Israel, so they must grab whatever half-truths they can find and claim that the Frankenstein monster of connecting parts from the Rome Statute, the Apartheid Convention (which only say "racial discrimination" similar to that of South Africa), the ICERD (which excludes non-citizens from its expanded definition of "racial discrimination,") and now the ICJ Namibia Case (which does not define apartheid nor racial discrimination in any sense.)

Amnesty is lying - and they know it.






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