Washington Attacks the Amnesty International Report

Amnesty International Report

Once again a mainstream human rights group has declared that Israel is an apartheid state. This time it’s Amnesty International, who put out a 280-page report on the topic this week.

The document cites numerous examples of home demolitions, family separation, imprisonment, torture, restrictions on movement, and unlawful killing. It classifies Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as a “crime against humanity” and calls on the international community to act.

“Our report reveals the true extent of Israel’s apartheid regime. 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,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard.

Amnesty’s conclusions are obvious and long overdue, but that’s precisely why the report is important. Like Human Rights Watch, the non-governmental organization is openly embraced by purveyors of NPR-style liberalism and enthusiastically cited by the U.S. State Department when it puts out statements criticizing the policies of official state enemies. The AP’s Matt Lee zeroed in on this contradiction during a recent State Department press conference and left spokesperson Ned Price trying to articulate a consistency that doesn’t exist:

QUESTION: Ned, it may be true that you don’t offer public comprehensive evaluations of outside reports, but you certainly cite them quite a bit in your own Human Rights Report. And I went back and looked, and in terms of just the last Human Rights Report cited Amnesty International on Ethiopia, on Cuba, on China and Xinjiang, on Iran, on Burma, on Syria, on Cuba. And that – those references are endorsements of what this group, Amnesty, and then other groups as well that are cited, have found. Why is it that – without taking a stand or making a judgment about the findings of this particular report, why is it that all criticism of Israel is – from these groups is almost always rejected by the U.S., and yet accepted, welcomed, and endorsed when it comes – when it comes out, when the criticism is of other countries, notably countries with which you have significant policy differences?

MR PRICE: Matt, I would make a couple points. Number one, when we include a footnote in something like —

QUESTION: These aren’t footnotes, Ned. These are – these are full-on citations.

MR PRICE: When we cite – when we cite, which it’s a game of semantics, I suppose, but whether you call it a citation or a footnote —

QUESTION: Well, when it says in the report, Amnesty International found this, X —

MR PRICE: Yes.

QUESTION: — in Xinjiang with the Uyghurs, and we – and we determine that we think that it’s a genocide, and you guys come out and cite that, and say, well, we also agree that it’s a genocide —

MR PRICE: That is a far cry, Matt, from saying – from saying that we have —

QUESTION: I’m not saying it’s the same thing, but —

MR PRICE: — comprehensive agreement with a third-party report that was produced by an outside group.

QUESTION: So it’s just – so it’s just when it’s criticism of Israel that you feel free to disagree? Where have you ever disagreed with an Amnesty report or a Human Rights Report on a country such as Iran or China?

MR PRICE: This is not – Matt, this is not about any outside group. This is about our vehement disagreement with a certain finding in a report by an outside group.

QUESTION: Okay.

MR PRICE: There are plenty of times where we cite, as you said, outside groups in our own reports. We cite the facts that they have uncovered, that they have put forward. But I don’t think you’re going to find any citation in any State Department document – and I don’t think I’ll regret saying this – that says the department agrees on a comprehensive basis with absolutely everything that’s in this report.

Along with the Biden administration, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have rushed to denounce the report, but of course not one of them has attempted to engage with Amnesty’s actual findings or attempted to refute any of its research.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) called the apartheid charge a “lie” and warned that the “hysterical demonization of Israel” will “incite hatred.” Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) said the organization was hurling “false accusations of oppression against Israel” and called on politicians to return campaign contributions from Amnesty International.

One of the most ridiculous reactions comes from Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It follows the same beats as the other denunciations but contains its own striking wrinkle: blaming the Palestinians for Israel’s human rights violations. “The report ascribes little agency to the Palestinian people or responsibility on their leaders, who have consistently failed to deliver any kind of meaningful economic, political, or civil reforms that could truly improve the lives of both Palestinians and Israelis,” it reads.

“This might be the wildest response from a Democrat politician yet to the Amnesty report,” tweeted Electronic Intifada’s Maureen Murphy. “Palestinian kids who are tried and imprisoned in military courts are responsible for their own fates I guess.”

Wisconsin Lawmakers Push for Omar Assad Probe

Last month Palestinian-American Omar Assad died of a heart attack after Israeli forces aggressively arrested the 78-year-old man at a checkpoint. Assad was allegedly pulled out of his car, dragged across the ground, handcuffed, gagged, and forced to lie on his stomach. An autopsy found that Assad died of a heart attack brought on by “external violence.”

Assad lived in Milwaukee before moving back to his West Bank hometown of Jiljilya. His United States family naturally has many questions about his death. “He was very weak, his son Hane told the AP. “He walked with a cane. It takes him five minutes to get to the car, the way he walks. He doesn’t have the power of 30 soldiers . . . The military said ‘we left and he was fine.’ It doesn’t make sense.”

Israel carried out a week-long internal army investigation and ultimately found that “the incident showed a clear lapse of moral judgment.” Yehuda Fox, commander of the IDF’s Central Command said that this was “a very serious, out-of-the-ordinary and unfortunate event.” The battalion’s commander will apparently be reprimanded, the platoon and company commanders removed from their positions. They will not be allowed to serve in commanding positions for two years. In other words, there will be no criminal charges.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem put out a statement on the investigation. “The army’s announcement regarding the death of Omar Assad is adorned with empty words about ‘moral failure’ — concluding, as expected, with the faintest of rebukes,” it reads. “In fact, the fundamental moral failure is that of Israel’s senior echelons, leading a regime of Jewish supremacy, one in which the human life of Palestinians has no value.”

Two members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Gwen Moore, are now asking the Biden administration to open an investigation into Assad’s death. “We strongly support human rights and the rule of law as the foundation of United States foreign policy,” reads a letter from the lawmakers to Secretary of State Tony Blinken. “As a Palestinian American, Mr. Assad deserves the full protections afforded U.S. citizens living abroad and his family deserves answers.”

Indiana Rep. Andre Carson expressed support for the effort on Twitter. “I commend my congressional colleagues for urging the President to investigate the killing of a Palestinian-American by members of the Israeli military, and I join their call,” he tweeted. “His loved ones deserve answers, and any act of wrongdoing demands accountability.”

State Department spokesperson Ned Price says that the Biden administration supports an investigation and Axios’ Barak Ravid reports that Blinken has “raised concerns” with Israel over Assad’s death.

The congressional response is notable but it’s hard to envision any big push for accountability from the United States. This certainly wouldn’t be the first U.S. citizen to die at the hands of the IDF with virtually no consequences.

More DSA/Palestine Drama

There’s another Jamaal Bowman situation developing in central Texas. Greg Casar is a progressive Austin city council-member who is running for congress in the state’s 35th district. Casar is a member of DSA and the socialist organization’s local chapter has endorsed him in the race.

Casar aligns with DSA views on many issues, but not on Israel apparently. The group supports the BDS movement and opposes U.S. military aid to the country. Jewish Insider obtained a letter that Casar wrote to a local rabbi where he voices his opposition to BDS and support for additional Iron Dome funding.

“My approach to foreign policy is based in adherence to values rooted in justice and democracy,” writes Casar. “I believe in the right of Israelis to live in their own democratic state. I also believe in the right of Israelis to live in peace, free from violent attacks from nation-states or from groups like Hezbollah or Hamas, and in Congress I will support the continued federal aid for self defense of Israel. This includes the systems necessary for defense against rocket attacks that could harm civilians.”

Casar is running for the Democratic nomination against moderate state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez. Rodriguez provided a policy paper to Jewish Insider. “The United States, and in particular its elected leaders in Congress, must state unequivocal, full-throated support for Israel,” it reads. “Anything less is dangerous, unethical and counter-productive to peace. Political space between the US and Israel has real ramifications by emboldening Israel’s and America’s enemies, restricting progress of the peace process, and endangering countless civilian lives.”

DSA’s national organization has not made an endorsement in the Texas race. Yesterday Austin DSA tweeted, “Tonight, Austin DSA’s Leadership Committee voted to continue discussing congressional candidate Greg Casar’s letter on Israel and Palestine with our members and the campaign until our Sunday meeting, when we will release a more detailed statement.”

Odds & Ends

?? There’s an anti-BDS bill making its way through Virginia’s State Legislature. Here are some of the comments CAIR Director of Government Affairs Department Robert S. McCaw delivered to the subcommittee:

Under HB 1161, a business owner could boycott any U.S. state, the federal government, Canada, or Mexico without any consequence. But a business owner’s boycott of Israel would disqualify a person from doing business with Virginia. This kind of viewpoint-specific oath, designed for the benefit of a single foreign nation, is an obvious violation of the First Amendment…  

HB 1161 is clearly designed to suppress Palestinian human rights activism within the state of Virginia by prohibiting government contractors from boycotting Israel, in violation of the First Amendment, which bars Virginia from using government contracts as a vehicle for content-based discrimination.

?? Predictable dreck from Senator Chuck Schumer: “I applaud the Biden administration for swiftly rejecting the absurd and patently false labeling of Israel as an apartheid state. Delegitimizing the existence of the State of Israel – a fellow democracy and the world’s only Jewish state – as Amnesty does in its report, brings the parties no closer to peace, but simply hardens the extremes who do not wish to ever see a two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace, freedom, security and prosperity.”

?? Kat DesCamp-Renner has an interesting piece in Responsible Statecraft about Gen Z support for the Iran Deal:

The idea that military action is the key to defending American lives rings deeply hollow for a generation that has seen many of their families battered by two historic recessions, a pandemic that soon will have killed one million Americans, and the impacts of accelerating climate change. We have grown up in a nation perpetually at war and watched our country reap what those wars have sown: the suffering of our veterans and the diversion of desperately needed funds to maintain basic infrastructure and the social safety net to the Pentagon and military contractors, the excessive militarization of police departments, massive fossil fuel emissions, and the fracturing of American democracy itself. 

?? David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, wrote a book. In it he claims that the former president stunned advisers, during a 2017 meeting with then-Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, by criticizing Netanyahu. “Although the meeting was private and off the record, we all envisioned a headline tomorrow that Trump had praised Abbas and criticized Netanyahu – the worst possible dynamic for the president’s popularity or for the prospects of the peace process,” writes Friedman. ““Fortunately, and incredibly, the event wasn’t leaked.”

?? Sarah Lazare has a piece on Trump’s Iran sanctions continuing under Biden:

Biden has a different rhetorical style—he does not engage in similar public pronouncements of sadism. Yet, for the entire year Biden has been in office, he has continued these very same “maximum pressure” sanctions, even as the pandemic has raged in Iran. Right after his inauguration, Biden said he would review these and other U.S. sanctions continued from the Trump era, but the Treasury Department’s 2021 Sanctions Review, released in October 2021, gave no indication that the Biden administration plans to shift course. Instead of a reckoning with the Trump administration’s cruelty, it was a vacuous and puffy report that didn’t even mention the Covid pandemic at all, leaving those pushing for sanctions relief disappointed and alarmed. In statements and news conferences, the Biden administration frames those sanctions as necessary leverage to reenter the accord, and occasionally throws criticism at the Trump administration for withdrawing from the JCPOA in the first place.

?? The Trump administration expanded the United States military’s use of landmines. Biden promised to roll this vicious decision back when he ran for president, but there’s been no action. “President Biden has made his position with respect to the use of landmines clear, and the Administration’s review of U.S. anti-personnel landmine policy remains ongoing,” a senior administration official recently told Politico. Read that sentence back a couple times.

? A federal judge has stopped the state of Texas from enforcing its anti-BDS law against a Palestinian-American contractor. Rasmy Hassouna is the owner of a Houston-based A&R Engineering and Testing. Last year he filed a lawsuit against the state over the law. Hassouna was entering into a renewal contract with Houston but refused to sign a pledge to refrain from boycotting Israel.

“He acknowledged that that pro-Palestinian view is protected by the First Amendment,” said Hassouna’s attorney of the judge’s decision . “That may sound like little crumbs, but that’s a controversial take, and it’s a blessing.”

?? On the Mondoweiss podcast I spoke with JVP Action’s Beth Miller about the impact of the Abraham Accords and recent congressional efforts to expand them.

Stay safe out there,

Michael