Amnesty International Accuses Israel of Being An "Apartheid" State

In a landmark 280-page report issued on January 31, 2022, Amnesty International (AI) accused Israel of the crime of apartheid, saying “it is a crime against humanity, and it has to end.” It called for an end to the system of “oppression and domination” it imposes on millions of Palestinians living under its rule.

Through a number of discriminatory policies like home demolitions, family separation, restrictions on freedom of movement, imprisonment and torture, Israel has met the criteria for the crime of apartheid as it is defined under international law, the report said. The report declares: “Since 1948, Israel has established a set of laws and systems that are designed to oppress and dominate Palestinians,” and are carried out with the intent of privileging Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.

Writing in The Guardian (Feb. 5, 2022), Chris McGreal points out that critics of the Amnesty International Report, such as the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, would have to believe “Israel has been led by anti- Semites who hate their own country. In smearing those who lay out a reasoned case that Israel is guilty of apartheid under international law, American critics are conveniently sidestepping years of damning judgments by Israeli leaders. As Yassi Sarid, a former Israeli Cabinet minister and member of the Knesset for 32 years, put it in 2008: ‘What acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid, and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck—it is apartheid.’”

McGreal reports that, “Leading Israeli politicians have warned for years that their country was sliding into apartheid. They include two former prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, who can hardly be dismissed as anti- Semites or hating Israel. ‘As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political reality called Israel it is going to be either non- Jewish or non-democratic,’ Barak said in 2010. ‘If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.’ Israel’s former attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, was even clearer: ‘We established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day,’ he said in 2002.”

Many other prominent Israelis have expressed similar views. Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet intelligence service, has said his country has “apartheid characteristics.” Shulamit Aloni, the second woman to serve as a cabinet minister after Golda Meir, and Lon Liel, former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, told the Guardian that their country “practices a form of apartheid.” A.B. Yehoshua, one of Israel’s greatest writers, said in 2020: “The cancer today is apartheid in the West Bank. This apartheid is digging more and more deeply into Israeli society and impacting its humanity.”

The intent of Israeli policy, according to the AI report, is to create and maintain Jewish domination over Palestinians which can be demonstrated through laws that were instituted early after Israel’s establishment that allowed for open Jewish immigration and simultaneously prevented the Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes. Israel implements laws that geographically fragments Palestinians and confined them to “separate, densely populated enclaves,” where basic human development is restricted.

Agnes Callamard, AI’s Secretary General, said, “We have found that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid. The international community has an obligation to act.” **