Amnasty International

Amnesty International continues its biased approach to the conflict, as evidenced by its report entitled “Surviving under siege – The impact of movement restrictions on the right to work.”

In the report, Amnesty criticizes Israel’s closures and blockades, which are the result of palestinian terror attacks against Israeli citizens.

“The existence of charity and humanitarian assistance do not absolve Israel from its obligation to ensure the Palestinians’ right to work, so that they can feed themselves and their families with dignity,” said Amnesty International.

Amnesty concede that Israel has the right to protect its citizens, yet still criticize these necesary steps as “arbitrary, discriminatory or collective measures and punishment on the Palestinian population.”

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians cannot be made to pay for the crimes of a handful of individuals,” Amnesty International stressed. “Any restrictions on the movement of people and goods should be imposed only in relation to a specific security threat and if they are non-discriminatory, necessary and proportionate in scope and duration.”

This is a ridiculous criticism. Israel receives numerous terror threats almost every day. Given that the terrorists usually enter Israel with palestinian workers (and are sometimes workers themselves), Israel is forced to impose general closures. Israel cannot be expected to allow all palestinians into Israel just because it cannot immediately identify the terrorists. Almost every time Israel lifts a closure, there is another terror attack.

Furthermore, by referring to the crimes of a “handful of individuals”, Amnesty is grossly minimizing the extent of the terrorist infrastructure in the palestinian areas. We are dealing with hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals, involved in terrorist activities, not merely 5 or 10 as Amnesty implies.

The report continues with a criticism of the security fence, again the direct result of palestinian terror. But rather than calling it what is – a fence – Amnesty adopt the terminology “wall/fence.”

Amnesty do say this about the palestinian’s obligations:

“Similarly, the Palestinian Authority should take urgent measures to prevent such attacks by Palestinian armed groups and carry out thorough investigations in all cases,” the organization said. “The Palestinian Authority must also ensure that those responsible for such attacks are brought to justice in proceedings that meet international standards for fair trial.”

Note that terrorists are referred to as “armed groups”, and that Amnesty seems more concerned with their receiving a fair trial than anything else. Furthermore, there is no condemnation of terrorist activities. Given that the majority of the report deals with Israel’s alleged human rights violations, this is unacceptable.

I am hardly surprised by Amnesty’s one-sided approach. After the last suicide bombing in Jerusalem, I noted that they did not even mention the attack, let alone condemn it.

I guess so-called humanitarian organizations only care about “humans”. Jews apparently don’t qualify.

Update: Israel has now slammed the “wilful one-sidedness” of the report.