Leading Global Human Rights Organisation Amnesty International on Tuesday formally labeled Israel as an apartheid state that treats Palestinians as “an inferior racial group,”.
In doing so, Amnesty International joined other human rights groups that have condemned the Jewish state’s vehemently racist and exclusivist policies against Palestinians and Muslims.
While releasing the shocking findings in a report titled Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians”, Amnesty International’s secretary-general Agnes Callamard said that “Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession, and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid”.
She added that “whether they live in Gaza, east Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights”.
According to the findings of Amnesty International, Israeli conduct and policies met the criteria for the crime of apartheid under international law.
Previous Findings on Israeli Apartheid
Human rights watchdogs have often pointed out the apartheid and racist policies of Israel.
A year ago, Israeli-based rights group B’Tselem asserted that Israeli policies had been designed to enforce “Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” and met the definition of “apartheid”.
New York-based Human Rights Watch in April last year became the first major international rights group to publicly level the controversial allegation.
The present report by London-based Amnesty International builds on those previous calls in asserting that Israeli-enforced apartheid exists in occupied Palestinian territories and within Israel itself, where Arab Muslims make up over 20% of the population.
Amnesty asserted that Israel has been systematically committing serious human rights violations against Palestinians for decades.
“Violations such as forcible transfer, administrative detention, torture, unlawful killings, serious injuries, and the denial of basic rights and freedoms” constitute crimes against humanity, charged Amnesty.
Israeli and Palestinian Response
Jews and Palestinians reacted along expected lines with Palestinians showering praise on the London-based organization for highlighting their miseries and Israeli Jews dismissing it as anti-Semitic.
The Palestinian Authority, which has civilian control over parts of the West Bank, praised Amnesty for its “courageous and fair” work on behalf of the Palestinian people.
Hamas, a revolutionary Palestinian organization that has controlled Gaza since 2007 and is considered a terrorist organization by much of the West, also welcomed the report by applauding Amnesty’s professionalism.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, however, criticized the report by claiming it to be “divorced from reality” and charged that “Amnesty quotes lies spread by terrorist organizations”, reported AFP.
He also called on Amnesty to “withdraw” the report.
Criticism of Israel and Anti-Semitism
Several Israeli and Jewish organizations criticized the findings of Amnesty International as anti-Semitic under the guise of political correctness.
The president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, said Amnesty’s report “does absolutely nothing to offer a constructive way forward and has no real interest in promoting the human rights of Palestinians”.
Ms. Callamard from Amnesty dismissed these allegations by saying that a critique of the practices and policies of the State of Israel does not fall under anti-Semitism.
While talking to reporters on Tuesday, she also dismissed charges that Amnesty “was singling out” Israel, highlighting the group’s work on Israel’s arch-foe Iran and on China, among other places, reported AFP.
For the unversed, West Bank and East Jerusalem are under Israeli occupation since 1967. According to Amnesty International, Israeli policies of settling hundreds of thousands of Jews in these areas by displacing Palestinian Muslims are regarded as illegal under international law.
Apartheid is a crime against humanity
Earlier in 2021, the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict expected to focus in part on possible war crimes committed during the 2014 conflict in Gaza.
Amnesty has called on the ICC “to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation”.
It also urged the United Nations Security Council to “impose targeted sanctions, such as asset freezes, against Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of apartheid”.
“The international community needed to “face up to the reality of Israeli apartheid and pursue the many avenues to justice which remain shamefully unexplored”, it added.
The report asserted that apartheid is a crime against humanity, and it has to end.