CONCLUSION

It cannot be seriously disputed that Amnesty International’s reports on Operation Protective Edge lacked objectivity and professionalism. They betrayed a systematic anti-Palestinian bias amounting to apologetics on Israel’s behalf. They also marked a steep regression from the high standard Amnesty set in its reports on the Israel-Palestine conflict during the past two decades. Amnesty will no doubt be tempted to respond that if this writer criticizes its pro-Israel bias while Israel criticizes its pro-Palestinian bias, Amnesty must be doing something right. But that’s as if to say, if one gets attacked by the flat-Earthers at one extreme and the round-Earthers at the other, then it proves that the oblong-Earthers must be telling the truth. A detailed, responsible critique of Amnesty warrants a detailed, responsible reply. Anything short of one will only confirm the charges leveled.

It is a separate but still important question, What happened? In the absence of a smoking gun, one can only speculate on the springs of Amnesty’s abrupt change of course. In fact, Amnesty is just the most recent of several high-profile cases. In 2011, the South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who chaired the UN Human Rights Council commission investigating Operation Cast Lead, abruptly recanted his support of the commission’s report, after a vicious ad hominem campaign waged by Israel and its supporters. In 2014, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign abruptly rescinded the appointment of a professor “following a campaign by pro-Israel students, faculty members and donors.” It is no secret that, in recent years, Israel has been losing the battle for public opinion in the West, especially in liberal precincts such as college campuses and the human rights community. It is also no secret that the Israel lobby has resorted to intimidating and strong-arm tactics in order to silence criticism emanating from these quarters. Amnesty has been in the sights of Israel lobby groups such as NGO Monitor. A recent vote on anti-Semitism by Amnesty’s UK branch suggests that their tactics are having the desired effect. All the available evidence points to the conclusion that anti-Semitism is at most a marginal phenomenon in British life; according to survey results, well under 10 percent of the population holds a negative opinion of Jews, whereas 60 percent holds a negative opinion of Roma/Gypsies and 40 percent a negative opinion of Muslims. The manifest purpose of the periodic campaigns bewailing a “new anti-Semitism” is to stifle criticism of Israel’s atrocious human rights record. Yet, Amnesty’s UK Board signed on to, while the membership narrowly defeated (468-461), a 2015 resolution calling for an Amnesty UK campaign against resurgent anti-Semitism.

Whatever the cause of Amnesty’s volte-face, the damage it has done cannot be denied. Supporters of Palestinian human rights and a just and lasting peace have come to depend on Amnesty as a credible corrective to Israeli hasbara and frequent pro-Israel media bias. The abdication of its professional mandate cannot but dismay. Amnesty’s worst sin, however, runs much deeper: its abandonment of a forsaken people suffering under an illegal and inhuman blockade punctuated by periodic, ever-escalating massacres. If only for the sake of the people of Gaza, one hopes that Amnesty will yet find its way.

An earlier draft of this text was forwarded to Philip Luther, director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa division, and to knowledgeable personalities in Gaza. Their input improved the quality of the final version. Maren Hackmann-Mahajan and Jamie Stern-Weiner provided invaluable assistance.

Norman G. Finkelstein

2 July 2015

New York City

References

Finkelstein, Method and Madness, chapter 3.

Robert Mackey, “Professor’s Angry Tweets on Gaza Cost Him a Job,” New York Times (12 September 2014). For a careful assessment of this case, see American Association of University Professors, Academic Freedom and Tenure: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (April 2015), which concluded that “aborting an appointment in this manner without having demonstrated cause is tantamount to summary dismissal, an action categorically inimical to academic due process.”

In fairness to Amnesty, it does absolve Hamas (if just barely) of the widely reported charge of “human shielding.” 2014 Gaza Conflict alleged that Hamas engaged in coercive “human shielding” on the dubious basis of “eyewitness testimony from a number of IDF officers” (paras. 161-64). Just as in Operation Cast Lead, it turns out that during OPE it was not Hamas but Israel that practiced human shielding. Finkelstein, “This Time,” pp. 88-89; Medical Fact-Finding Mission, pp. 91, 94.

NGO Monitor, Amnesty International: Failed methodology, corruption, and anti-Israel bias (23 February 2015).

Pew Research Center, Faith in European Project Reviving (June 2015); YouGov, “Roma People and Muslims Are the Least Tolerated Minorities in Europe” (May 2015).

Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah, part 1.

Amnesty International, UK, Section Board Meeting, “Draft Minutes of the Meeting Held on Saturday 21 March 2015,” MB 39/15 (amnesty.org.uk/webfm_send/1287); Rosa Doherty, “Amnesty Rejects Call to Campaign against Anti-Semitism,” Jewish Chronicle (21 April 2015).