An Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al (AI) document published today labelling Israel’s existence since 1948 as ‘apartheid’, has been scath­ingly rejected by the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry (ECAJ), the peak rep­res­ent­at­ive body of the Aus­trali­an Jewish community, which has described the AI report as ‘shoddy and dishonest’.

“AI’s use of the apartheid smear against Israel bears no rela­tion­ship to reality”, said ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim.  “Israel remains the only democracy in the Middle East. It is the only country in the Middle East ranked by Freedom House as free and a democracy. The open and diverse nature of its society, the inclusion and equality of Israel’s Arab citizens in all echelons of society including its coalition gov­ern­ment, makes a mockery of Amnesty’s claims.”

“Some 20% of Israel’s pop­u­la­tion are of Arab back­ground. They are fully-fledged citizens of Israel with equal voting, civil and religious rights, as enshrined in Israel’s Basic Law and Declar­a­tion of Inde­pend­ence.  Arabs serve in the military, police and Supreme Court. There have been Israeli Arab members of par­lia­ment since the first elections in 1949. Fourteen currently serve as members of the Israeli par­lia­ment. One, Mansour Abbas, is Deputy Minister of Arab Affairs in the Prime Minister’s Office. The Supreme Court includes an Arab judge, George Karra. This week the Israeli Judicial Selection Committee appointed six Arab judges and jurists – half of them women – to prominent judicial positions.”

“Amnesty’s pro­nounce­ments on Israel are driven by a patho­lo­gic­al hatred for the Jewish State.  This is betrayed by numerous public state­ments by senior figures at Amnesty, which have included calling Israel a “scum state”, and its demo­crat­ic­ally-elected gov­ern­ment, “rogue”. A research­er in Amnesty’s Middle East branch admitted she wanted Israel “gone”.  The AI report is a polemical diatribe in similar vein, not a good faith analysis, and should be dismissed as such.”

“The starting assump­tion of this document is that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish State, even though its estab­lish­ment expressly as ‘a Jewish State’ was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 1947 (Res­ol­u­tion 181) and has been reaf­firmed in UN res­ol­u­tions and inter­na­tion­al agree­ments ever since”.

“At a time when many Arab countries are forging accords with Israel, and relations between Arabs and Jews are flour­ish­ing in numerous parts of the Middle East, Amnesty’s ill-motivated and backward-looking effort to vilify Israel seems to be trying to turn back the peace clock, inflame tensions and incite hatred and violence.”

“The Report denies the right of the Jewish people to national self-determ­in­a­tion, char­ac­ter­ising it as racist, yet is hypo­crit­ic­ally silent about the fact that the Palestini­an Authority and Hamas define “Palestine” as “Arab” and “Islamic.”  Hamas forbids any Jew from living in Gaza, but Amnesty is silent about that too.  There appears to be no way Israel could defend itself and its people in a way that would be accept­able to Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al.”

“Amnesty has a clear cred­ib­il­ity problem. In recent years AI has several times rushed into print to demonise Israel with maximum publicity, only to retract its out­land­ish state­ments later, with far less publicity.  Its latest report has perverted the noble cause of human rights and marks another milestone in the moral descent of a human rights organ­isa­tion which was once uni­ver­sally venerated.”