Author: Sh'ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices

Jews from Across the Globe Welcome Amnesty Report on Israeli Apartheid

The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine, which represents Jewish organizations in thirteen countries including Aotearoa-New Zealand, views the recent report by Amnesty International on Israel’s system of apartheid as a a serious wake-up call to the world.  The full text of the IJCJP statement appears below.

After four years of investigation, Amnesty International has joined Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem and others in concluding that Israel operates a “system which amounts to apartheid under international law.” Full text of the report is here, with a short video tutorial here.

Why is this report different? Amnesty is the world’s largest human rights organisation. When Amnesty International calls on nations to respond to apartheid with the force of law and diplomacy, it speaks with unrivaled moral authority. Amnesty has called for UN Security Council sanctions against Israeli officials, investigations by the International Criminal Court and an arms embargo of Israel.

Amnesty International is also a membership organisation. This landmark report will mobilise many Amnesty members and followers to actively support Palestinians’ full individual and collective rights.

The Amnesty International report thus brings the apartheid discourse firmly into the mainstream and the highest diplomatic circles.

And what is not different? The NZ Jewish Council issued a statement calling Amnesty International antisemitic. The statement failed entirely to engage with Amnesty’s findings, and instead tried to change the subject. Nothing new there.

Alternative Jewish Voices has this week written about the intersection of Aotearoa’s Jewish and Evangelical Zionism and conservative secular politics. Overlapping directorships bring views to the Jewish Council that are far from the mainstream.  We have documented some of the implications, seeking more transparency among the voices which might be assumed to represent the entire Jewish community.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Global Jews Welcome Amnesty Report on Israeli Apartheid

The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine, which represents Jewish organizations from fifteen countries around the globe, views the recent report by Amnesty International on Israel’s system of apartheid as a a serious wake-up call to the world. 

The Amnesty report is the result of years of painstaking investigation showing decisively that the Israeli government has privileged Jewish Israelis in every sphere of life over Palestinian citizens and residents in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Joining other human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organization, B’tselem, the report echoes what Palestinians have been saying for decades in every forum they can find: that the outrageous violations of the human rights of Palestinians must stop.

The Amnesty report, as well as other critical reports on Israel’s apartheid system, can best be understood within a context of the broader Palestinian-led movement for justice against settler colonialism that began before and during Israel’s creation in 1948. At that time, the Zionist movement and then Israel expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their land and homes. This is known as the Nakba, the catastrophe. The process of ethnic cleansing continues to this very day.

Yet again, attacks by the Israeli government and some Jewish organizations are calling the report “antisemitic,” but these critics should be pressed to provide evidence supporting their claims. This will not be possible, since the report reflects the truth. Palestinians have lived under Israel’s apartheid system for decades. As Jews, we have seen these Israeli policies in action with our own eyes and know they are in complete defiance of the long-standing Jewish tradition of social justice.

We will continue to stand firm with the Palestinian movement for freedom, justice, equality, and dignity.

The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine

a coalition of organizations from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, US

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has issued a military order which designates six leading Palestinian legal and human rights groups as “terrorist” organisations. The government of Israel has declined to back its orders with evidence.

The order criminalises lawyers who provide legal aid, and observers who inform the world of human rights abuses: Addameer,  Al-Haq,  Palestine branch of Defence of Children International, Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, Bisan Center for Research & Development. 

On the websites of the targeted organisations, you will learn about incarcerations, documented human rights violations, the imprisonment of children, aid to farmers in the West Bank. To prevent the sharing of such information, the Israeli government will now fight these activities as if they were fighting terrorists. 

Leading global human rights organisations have objected in the strongest terms. They clearly state that they will continue to work with their Palestinian colleagues:  Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch call it “an attack on the human rights movement” while B’Tselem calls it “a draconian measure that criminalizes critical human rights work.”

Alternative Jewish Voices calls this military order the contemptible act of an authoritarian.  This order would jeopardise the funding which creates factual information about Palestinian life under Israel’s occupation.  The order poses a new level of violent threat to the defenders of human and legal rights.  If we do not defuse that threat internationally, it will set a frightening precedent for all of the people who stand up to authoritarians around the world.

Israel’s military order extends its pattern of criminalising any resistance to its regime of occupation, de facto annexation and legislated apartheid.

Members of Israel’s government refer to boycotts – the non-violent exercise of economic choice – as economic terrorism.  Israel’s President called Ben and Jerry’s decision not to sell ice cream on occupied land as “a new kind of terrorism.”  Around the same time, Israel confiscated 23 tons of chocolate bars destined for Gaza with the explanation, “We will continue to hunt down networks that fund terror.” 

There seems to be no form of resistance that Israel won’t categorise as terroristic.  This new military order will criminalise even the use of the law.  In occupied Palestine, it appears that resistance will be treated as terror, period.

We urge the government of Aotearoa-New Zealand to take the recent advice of Ban Ki Moon, former Secretary General of the United Nations, and change our yawning diplomatic stance:

“a powerful state is controlling another people through an open-ended occupation, settling its own people on the land in violation of international law and enforcing a legal regime of institutionalised discrimination… What has become increasingly clear in recent years is Israel’s intent to maintain its structural domination and oppression of the Palestinian people through indefinite occupation… resulting in a situation that arguably constitutes apartheid. It is now time for the international community to recognise and confront the consequences of Israel’s policies and actions in this regard.”

When will we defend the people who defend the law and human rights?

Alternative Jewish Voices  

October 26, 2021