The London-based international human rights group Amnesty International plans to publish a report on Tuesday accusing Israel of committing the crime of apartheid, the Forward newspaper revealed on Sunday.
“In a 211-page report set for publication on Tuesday and obtained by the Forward,” the news site writes, “Amnesty alleges that Israel is involved in a ‘widespread attack directed’ against Palestinians that amounts to ‘the crime against humanity of apartheid.”’
Every day Palestinians live the ugly reality of #apartheid . For decades our institutions have documented Israel’s crimes of settler colonialism, segregation & racism. Thank you @amnesty for confirming, however belatedly, our lived reality. https://t.co/qugT4Jm2dh
— Husam Zomlot (@hzomlot) January 31, 2022
“Since its establishment in 1948,” the report says, “Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony.”
Amnesty also exposes the involvement of “almost all of Israel’s civilian administration and military authorities… in the enforcement of the system of apartheid against Palestinians across Israel”, in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as “against Palestinian refugees and their descendants outside the territory.”
Israeli officials called on Amnesty not to publish the report, slamming it as “false, biased and antisemitic”.
The Amnesty report isn’t even out yet, but Israel wasting no time to weaponize antisemitism to silence Palestinians and allies speaking up against Israel’s apartheid regime and crimes against humanity. https://t.co/05sn9wlqDI
— Mayss Al Alami – ميس العلمي (@MayssAlAlami) January 31, 2022
In a statement released on Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that Amnesty’s report “denies the state of Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” adding that “its extremist language and distortion of historical context were designed to demonize Israel and pour fuel onto the fire of antisemitism.”
The Amnesty report follows similar initiatives from Israeli organization B’tselem and New York-based group Human Rights Watch, in January and April 2021 respectively.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
