Amnesty International: Hidden Enemy of Palestinian Liberation
Amnesty International's latest report on Palestine has been hailed as heroic by some, while others view it as a veiled attack on Palestinian armed resistance.
A new report by Amnesty International, an NGO which claims to focus on human rights abuses, released on Tuesday says that Israel is responsible for the “crime of apartheid against Palestinians” and must be held accountable for treating them as “an inferior racial group.”
This report goes over the many details about how such policies severely affect the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza.
Examples include the theft and seizure of Palestinian properties, murder of civilians, imprisonment of innocent people through the “administrative detention” procedures, and various laws relating to citizenship and nationality for Palestinians. Amnesty asserts that these policies, in their sum total, amount to apartheid under the legal definition under international law.
Israel’s foreign minister Yair Lapid rejected these claims, claiming these reports are “divorced from reality” and that Amnesty “echoes the same lies shared by terrorist organizations.”
Aside from listing the realities on the ground in regards to the daily lives of Palestinians, Amnesty makes concrete demands that are some of the most bold and profound in the NGO’s history: targeted sanctions and an end to the apartheid system.
Despite this report being one of Amnesty’s boldest, many Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian cause believe such a report is not enough to stop the oppression and occupation of Palestine and its people, and is in fact a veiled attempt at delegitimizing armed resistance which is the most effective means of liberating Palestine from occupation.
But what about “israeli” occupation of Palestine? Amnesty International has taken no position on the military occupation and theft of Palestine as a whole, and the illegitimate nature of the Zionist regime’s existence:
Jisr Collective, an anti-imperialist diaspora media collective that produces research papers on various subjects, has lamented over the “NGOization” of the Palestinian cause.
In a white paper entitled “Insidious Normalization: The Case of the 6 NGOs,” Jisr cites various concrete sources and points of evidence to suggest that organizations like Amnesty do not seek to end the Zionist occupation of Palestine, but rather to give it a makeover.
The Amnesty Report and renewal of US Aid to the collaborator PA cannot be seen in isolation.
— Jisr Collective (@jisrcollective) February 1, 2022
While the Amnesty report highlights what everyone already knows, its main purpose is to reduce the struggle into a “Liberal Human Rights” framework rather than one based in Resistance. https://t.co/pCnXbwy3Sv
“This tactic to normalize [relations with Israel] through nonprofits and NGOs, which are often referred to as ‘civil society,’ is a long held strategy that is rooted deeply in American Liberal Zionism and resonates with the progressive movement that has planted this method in Congress,” Jisr asserts. “The ‘Rights Approach’ ‘reaffirms and safeguards ‘Israeli’ security’ by building a collaborative human rights advocacy movement that leverages NGOs, elected officials, and popular activists as an alternative to the stalled talks between the corrupt Palestinian Authority and unyielding ‘Israeli’ government.”
Jisr claims that, rather than ending Zionist occupation, the “Rights Approach” allows Israel to save face and create an impotent Palestinian state next to a powerful Zionist state.
Amnesty refuses to call the Zionist occupation of Palestine an occupation.
— Jisr Collective (@jisrcollective) February 4, 2022
Meanwhile, the Palestinians are expected to live up to every single “allegation” against them presented by Amnesty.
Never in history have the oppressed been asked to live up to such ridiculous standards. https://t.co/HpOKs2WyWe
Similar narratives have been put forth by Human Rights Watch, another NGO which uses the “Rights Approach” cited by Jisr Collective as a mask to normalize the Zionist entity’s occupation of Palestine, on the condition that it lightens its treatment of its occupied subjects.
TeleSur English ran a report on how many high ranking officials at Human Rights Watch come from former positions in the American government and intelligence agencies. One of the big sources of funding for HRW comes from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
According to a recent report by al Akhbar, Open Society Foundation has contributed millions of dollars in grants to destabilize the Arab world and shift its focus from resistance against Zionism to civil strife, leading many supporters of Palestine around the world to question the motives of HRW and other NGOs.
Feelings of mistrust toward NGOs among Palestine’s supporters are further bolstered by a 2017 report from Israeli newspaper Haaretz which showed how official documents stating that Amnesty International’s local Israeli branch served as a front for the Israeli Foreign Ministry in the 1970s.
A 2019 report from Mint Press News detailed Amnesty’s founder’s relationship with American and British intelligence agencies, stating that despite their reports about the abuses of the American and Israeli governments, Amnesty “also publishes a steady flow of indictments against countries that don’t play ball with Washington — countries like Iran, China, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea and more. Those reports amplify the drumbeat for a ‘humanitarian’ intervention in those nations.”
Despite this being one of Amnesty’s boldest reports on Israel’s abuses to date, for many supporters of Palestine around the world such a report is, at best, a case of too little, too late. At worst, Amnesty International is a quintessential example of how liberal NGOs serve as a smiley-faced soft power front for Anglo-American liberal imperialism and international Zionism.
It should be noted that Amnesty did not meet with the Israelis.
— Jisr Collective (@jisrcollective) February 4, 2022
Instead they’ve decided to scold the Palestinians for “giving money to illegally detained prisoners” and resisting a brutal military occupation that Amnesty refuses to recognize as an occupation. https://t.co/CfClXocEc4
When it comes to Amnesty’s toothless reports on US or Zionist crimes, zero change happens. But the slightest instance of a human rights “abuse” by one of the main enemies of US imperialism or the Zionist entity, who are best poised to defeat such hegemony by the natural right of armed resistance, it strengthens the ability of the arrogant powers to bomb, starve, sanction, and besiege those nations/groups through the PR boon they get of pretending that stomping out resistance to their tyranny is done for “humanitarian” purposes.
Not only does Amnesty deligitimize resistance, their slanderous, falsified reports directly target the Islamic Resistance Axis, often directly translating into policies made by the US, EU, or UN that further suffocate these nations/groups for the “crime” of resisting occupation and tyranny.
Amnesty International’s recent report should not be declared a victory for the Palestinian cause. Rather, it should be treated with intense suspicion and deep scrutiny, as the hidden enemy is sometimes more dangerous than the open enemy. No matter what charades are played out in the public between Amnesty and the “israeli” government, the Zionist entity benefits greatly from the liberal NGO’s repeated attacks on Iran and the Islamic Resistance Axis via their fictitious human rights reports.
