Casimiro PT / Shutterstock.com
Amnesty International UK has been widely criticised following the publication of a controversial report this week accusing Israel of being an ‘apartheid state’. Government officials from the UK, US and Germany rejected Amnesty’s description of Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state.
Speaking to the Jerusalem Post while on her visit to Israel, International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan condemned the language used by the report, stating: “That isn’t language I would ever want to see used” about Israel. She added: “Amnesty is free to publish any report they like, but it is not language that I think is in any way reasonable”.
A spokesperson for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) told The Times of Israel, “We do not agree with the use of this terminology. Any judgment on whether serious crimes under international law have occurred is a matter for judicial decision, rather than for governments or non-judicial bodies”.
US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides refuted the report, calling its central accusation “absurd”.
German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Christopher Burger voiced similar criticism at a news conference: “We reject expressions like apartheid or a one-sided focusing of criticism on Israel. That is not helpful to solving the conflict in the Middle East”. Ahead of the report’s release, Israel called it “false, biased, and antisemitic” and accused the organisation of endangering the safety of Jews around the world.
The 280-page report entitled “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity”, accuses Israel of maintaining “a system of apartheid against Palestinians” and of treating Palestinians as “an inferior non-Jewish racial group”. The report claims that since Israel’s establishment in 1948, it “has pursued a policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and maximizing its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis while restricting the rights of Palestinians”.
The report calls on the international community to impose an arms embargo on Israel and ban trade with Israeli settlements, as well as supporting the right to return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
