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Amnesty International Declares Israel is an apartheid state

2-08-2022

Amnesty International has finally called a spade a spade and declared Israel as an apartheid state.

The 280-page report, released Monday January 31st, 2022 titled, "Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity."

"The Israeli government is committing the crime against humanity of apartheid against Palestinians and must be held accountable," the organization said.

The Amnesty report follows other organizations that have accused Israel of operating an apartheid system, like former President Jimmy Carter, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.

Apartheid is a violation of public international law, a grave violation of internationally protected human rights, and a crime against humanity under international criminal law.

The term “apartheid” was originally used to refer to a political system in South Africa which explicitly enforced racial segregation, and the domination and oppression of one racial group by another. It has since been adopted by the international community to condemn and criminalize such systems and practices wherever they occur in the world.

Apartheid can best be understood as a system of prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment by one racial group of members of another with the intention to control the second racial group.

Palestinian Arab citizens make up about a fifth of Israel's population and have Israeli voting rights. But Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip do not have Israeli voting rights. Even within Israel, the report states, Israel has dispossessed Palestinians of their land and property and imposed segregation and discriminatory policies.

The report cites "In the course of establishing Israel as a Jewish state in 1948, Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages, in what amounted to ethnic cleansing," the report said. 

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) welcomes the report, "We welcome this exhaustive, landmark report as further recognition of what has been blazingly obvious: the Israeli government has been engaged in the systematic imposition of apartheid on the Palestinian people."

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), tweeted, "U.S. foreign aid shouldn't go to apartheid governments, period.”

In response to Amnesty, Israel's embassy to the U.S. retweeted and amplified an editorial in The Wall Street Journal criticizing the findings, highlighting a line that states, "the report all but ignores that Israel is a democracy that accords more rights to Arabs and Palestinians than does any other state in the region." 

Apartheid in South Africa was supported for over 40 years by the very western governments that now buttress apartheid in Israel. It was killed by popular opposition, particularly in the UK, which eventually led to a political shift against apartheid in the western world. The tide of opinion against apartheid was so strong that even Margaret Thatcher, who had labelled the African National Congress (ANC) as a terrorist organisation, helped propel its end.

Footnotes: Footnotes: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

Article Source: ALAMEENPOST