The New York Times’s failure to report on the Amnesty International report accusing Israel of apartheid is no oversight — it is a deliberate effort to suppress the news.
Kairos Palestine calls on the Church, civil society and governments to pressure Israel.
The Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council (JVP HAC) fully endorses the recent report by Amnesty International (AI) on “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.” JVP HAC says, “Growing consensus on a state of apartheid and international pressure on Israel to cease violations of international law can greatly improve the health status and well-being of Palestinians… Preventable illness and suffering, limited access to health services, and physical and mental trauma among Palestinians are clearly related to conditions of life under occupation and violence perpetrated by Israeli government, military, police, and settlers.”
Liberal Zionists are not accepting the reports of the leading human rights organizations, lately including Amnesty International, saying Israel practices apartheid. J Street and Ameinu and Partners for Progressive Israel reject the term, while Americans for Peace Now says it has no comment for now. They would be excommunicated by the Jewish establishment for endorsing the finding, even as progressive Jewish groups have accepted Amnesty’s verdict.
The Biden administration, and congress members from both sides of the aisle, are condemning Amnesty International’s new report on Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians.
The elites are finally not afraid to take on the Palestinian issue as shown by an overwhelming vote to condemn Israeli “apartheid,” passed by the convention of Washington, D.C., Episcopalians last week. “We will not make people happy with this resolution, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do,” said Rev. Michelle Morgan, rector of St. Mark’s Church, Capitol Hill.
The New York Times relies on Amnesty International often but is ignoring the organization’s report charging Israel with “apartheid.”
Amnesty International is the latest human rights organization to declare Israel an apartheid state, calling for an end to the “system of oppression and domination” it imposes on the millions of Palestinians living under its rule.
The pro-Israel tactic of accusing advocates for Palestinian rights of antisemitism is weakening, as shown by a series of recent attacks. Now labelling Amnesty International an antisemitic organization for stating that Israel practices apartheid can only discredit those tactics further. Palestinians are becoming more relatable to the world, and the antisemitism charge is transparently its own form of bigotry, for it denies Palestinians the right to self-determination.
In his new book, “The State of Israel Vs. The Jews,” Sylvain Cypel paints a too-hopeful portrait of the anti-Netanyahu wing of American Jewish life as a virtuous broad tent united in their opposition to racism. What actually exists is a hodgepodge of intercommunal bickering, toothless fingerwagging, and hand-wringing– and this against an ever growing backdrop of Jewish only roads, deliberate bombings of civilian infrastructure and Associated Press offices, as Cypel himself meticulously documents. And in assigning importance to that Jewish argument, Cypel fails to treat Palestinians as autonomous political actors in the struggle.