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There is hardly a country where there is no discrimination against minorities. Amnesty International (AI) has been documenting how discrimination and racism lead to human rights violations for more than sixty years.
In the Middle East, human life is often worth very little: Arbitrary arrests, torture and killings are the order of the day here in all countries. Also in Israel and the Palestinian territories occupied by it, whereby the perpetrators are not only Israelis.
Why single out Israel?
The West is helping with the discrimination and violence in the entire region: the global “war on terrorism” has put Arabs, especially Muslims, under general suspicion worldwide, the USA speaks of “collateral damage” when their drones kill Arab civilians, Guantanamo still exists.
So why single out Israel and pillory it as an “apartheid state”? AI answers this question by quoting former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Israel is not a state of all its citizens, but exclusively the state of the Jewish people.” The 200-page report begins with this quote, which is intended to prove that Israel is systematically oppressing the non-Jewish population and that its “apartheid” is violating international law.
Israelis feel the accusation twice
The allegation itself is not new: in 2021, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of “apartheid crimes against the Palestinians” in the territories it occupied. AI goes one step further and accuses Israel of systematic apartheid even within its internationally recognized borders, and has done so since the founding of the state in 1948.
The Israeli public is doubly sensitive to this accusation: In their eyes, Amnesty International fundamentally denies Israel’s right to exist – which the organization denies – and: They wonder why they speak of “apartheid” when Arabs are allowed to vote in Israel, judge , doctors and university professors? And that of all times now that Israel has a government in which an Arab party is also represented? Is that “apartheid?” ask even left-wing Israelis, who have a lot to complain about in their country.
They do not deny human rights violations and discrimination at all, on the contrary: they speak and write publicly against it and are usually in the minority. But this minority also feels branded when human rights organizations brand their Israel an “apartheid state”. “What does Amnesty International mean by that?” they ask. And: “Why now?”
AI remains guilty of explanation
The human rights organization emphasizes that it has always campaigned against racism and anti-Semitism. She rejects the accusation that her report is anti-Semitic, as formulated by Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. She just wanted to draw attention to the massive human rights violations, which violate international law, that Palestinians would suffer under the “system of institutional discrimination” of the State of Israel.
She fails to explain why she is now calling the only Jewish state in the world an “apartheid state”, in a world in which dozens of countries prefer a religion, an ethnic group or a “dominant culture” and commit human rights violations that are at least as serious.