Responses To the Amnesty International Report

The Amnesty International (AI) report accusing Israel of “apartheid” has come under criticism from the Israeli government and supporters of Israel in the U.S. The AI report comes a year after Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, issued reports also accusing Israel of “apartheid.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, while not pointing to any inaccuracies in the 280-page AI report, called AI “just another radical organization which echoes propaganda without checking facts.” He also accused AI of anti-Semitism: “I hate to use the argument that if Israel were not a Jewish state, nobody in Amnesty would dare argue against it, but in this case, there is no other possibility.”

Rabbi Eliot Cosgrove of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York told his congregation that he didn’t want to respond from the pulpit to the AI report, but he couldn’t help himself because he has committed his synagogue to supporting Israel. Mondoweiss (Feb. 14, 2022) reports that, “Cosgrove spent 15 minutes trashing a report he admits he hasn’t read—but that’s what you do ‘when a family member is attacked from the outside.’…He said, ‘I do so because for me, Israel is part and parcel of my Jewish identity, it’s central to my vision of the rabbinate…It will remain central to the mission of this synagogue…For me, to be Jewish today means to be actively engaged with Israel.’ He said that apartheid is ‘clickbait’ for the ‘feeding frenzy of Israel’s detractors.’ Rabbi Cosgrove admitted that even he had ‘all sorts of criticism of Israel, its systemic and ongoing restrictions of Palestinian rights, its repeated actions impeding Palestinian sovereignty…Israel’s inability to house liberal expressions of Jewish life, most recently the collapse of the Kotel.’ But, he said, when Israel is being criticized ‘from the outside,’ it must be defended as ‘family.’”

Jewish Voice for Peace welcomed the report “documenting the brutal reality of Israel’s apartheid regime.” AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti- Defamation League and other groups echoed the Israeli government’s criticism of the AI report. Columnist Liat Collins wrote in The Jerusalem Post that, “While it (AI) pretends to promote peace, it excels in promoting the tropes and stereotypes that encourage terrorism and violence. Amnesty’s study is not so much a damning report as a report in which truth be damned.” Those who called the report “anti- Semitic” were criticized editorially in Washington Jewish Week (Feb. 20, 2022): “It is not anti-Semitic to point out, as AI does, that Israel weakened its argument for equality when it passed the Nation State law in 2018. Not only did that law denigrate Israel’s Arab citizens and their culture, it also ignored the national aspirations of the Palestinian people.”

Other responses to the AI report were more nuanced. Matt Nosanchuck, president of the New York Jewish Agenda, provided this assessment: (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Feb. 10, 2022): “We must look beyond this report’s controversial legal conclusions and examine the difficult realities of Israel’s 55-year occupation of the West Bank, its control of the Gaza border and the unfulfilled promise of full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. It’s not just AI that has documented this in detail. Numerous Israeli NGOs and the U.S. State Department have warned about the many costs of occupation. These realities cannot be ignored—not by those who live in Israel nor by those of us who support Israel here in America.”

Speaking in personal terms, Nosanchuck writes: “I have traveled to Israel numerous times over the past 46 years, including spending a year there during college. I have seen first-hand the harsh realities of the occupation and felt the dream of a peacefully shared society for Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel slipping away. I have also observed how the lack of Palestinian equality corrodes Jewish ideals of a just, democratic and secure state. Like many others, especially many younger American Jews, I find it increasingly difficult to see those ideals in the current state of Israel.”

Concerning the AI report, he concludes: “The categoric condemnation of the AI report by many in our community avoids grappling with the ongoing control and denial of rights that Palestinians in the occupied territories and to a lesser degree in Israel experience day in and day out. This unsupportable reality—with no moral, logical, or politically feasible endgame—must change…Imagine if those of us who care deeply about safeguarding a democratic homeland for Jews in Israel expended as much effort fighting for greater justice in Israel and an end to the occupation as we spend responding each time someone condemns Israel; we could make a real difference in transforming the situation…We remain committed to standing up for our values. This requires acknowledging that there are difficult realities on both sides.”