Ali Abunimah’s blog | The Electronic Intifada

Ali Abunimah is now on bluesky sur X :

I couldn’t let Canada’s celebration of a 98-year-old Nazi SS veteran pass without comment, especially after Canada condemned Mahmoud Abbas’ recent comments about the Holocaust. My latest:

▻https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1706019337419538732

Ben & Jerry’s settles lawsuit, freezes out Israel | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/ben-jerrys-settles-lawsuit-freezes-out-israel

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The legal dispute between Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company Unilever has ended in a bit of a fudge.

But as a result, the ice cream maker can say that it is standing by its July 2021 decision to end all business in Israel so as not to be complicit in Israel’s illegal colonization of occupied Palestinian land.

Palestinians have had enough of Europe’s Holocaust hypocrisy
Ali Abunimah | 17 August 2022 | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinians-have-had-enough-europes-holocaust-hypocrisy

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(...)
Joining the attacks on Abbas, EU vice president Margaritis Schinas asserted that “the Holocaust is an indelible stain on European history; it erased Jewish life and heritage in many parts of our continent.”

He’s absolutely right about that. So if territory is the appropriate compensation for genocide, why has no European country, especially Germany, offered its own land for a “Jewish state?”

Palestinians are sick of paying the price for European hypocrisy and genocidal crimes.

Blowing apart a monstrous Israeli lie | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/blowing-apart-monstrous-israeli-lie

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It’s a monstrous lie, but Israeli propagandists keep repeating it: Palestinians deliberately sacrifice their own children just to make Israel look bad.

I had the opportunity to debunk this vicious, dehumanizing libel to the face of one such propagandist when I appeared on CGTN’s The Heat on Thursday.

#palestine #gaza #colonisation #colonialisme

Video: Germany must stop making Palestinians pay for its Nazi crimes | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-germany-must-stop-making-palestinians-pay-its-nazi-crimes

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Palestinians pay for its Nazi crimes

Ali Abunimah From the Editors 12 May 2021

On Tuesday I appeared on Deutsche Welle to talk about Israel’s ongoing aggression, and Palestinian resistance, in occupied Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Since Deutsche Welle is a German state broadcaster, I considered it particularly important to address German complicity in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

“I think it is time for the people of Germany and German elites to stop making Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip pay for the crimes of the German people against European Jews,” I told the TV channel.

“Palestinians are sick of paying the price for guilty German consciences.”

Germany has a long history of arming and funding Israel.

In recent years, German political elites have stepped up their smear campaigns and repression against supporters of Palestinian rights, slandering them as anti-Jewish bigots.

Israel and its lobby have successfully weaponized German guilt over the Holocaust to such an extent that Germany even opposes the International Criminal Court investigation into war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Germany must stop making Palestinians pay for its crimes – Ali Abunimah on DW
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPa83wSa9ik

German anti-Semitism chief must resign, say Jewish and Israeli scholars | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/german-anti-semitism-chief-must-resign-say-jewish-and-israeli-sc

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The latest demand for the removal of Felix Klein comes following his claim at an event on 30 June that “anti-Semitism from the left-liberal milieu” had been “making life a bit harder for me personally.”

Klein went on to say that “even if right-wing narratives currently have a higher potential for violence, we must not underestimate this area.”

The scholars reject this entirely: “No ‘left-liberal anti-Semites’ are bullying you, but Jews and non-Jews are protesting the way in which you are weaponizing the fight against anti-Semitism at the expense of free speech and basic civil rights – and the fight against anti-Semitism itself.”

The signers include Dani Karavan, Alex Levac, Yehuda Judd Ne’eman and David Shulman – all winners of the Israel Prize, the state’s highest official cultural honor.

They also include Harvard University’s Jean Comaroff, writer and Yeshayahu Leibowitz Prize winner Ilana Hammerman, and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Among the signers are Mark Levene, retired professor at the University of Southampton and winner of the Lemkin Prize of the Institute for the Study of Genocide; Michael Rothberg, chair in Holocaust studies at the University of California; and Barry Trachtenberg, chair of Jewish history at Wake Forest University.

The scholars call Klein’s latest declaration “deeply offensive.”

“You basically called us and many others criticizing you in a legitimate way anti-Semites,” they write. “We demand an apology for that.”

They also accuse Klein of minimizing the “acute danger that Jews in Germany face due to the surge in far-right anti-Semitism.”

Palestinian appeals Dutch war crimes immunity for Benny Gantz
Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 24 April 2020 | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinian-appeals-dutch-war-crimes-immunity-benny-gantz

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Benny Gantz will soon be sworn in as Israel’s deputy prime minister in a coalition deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

If the deal proceeds as planned, Gantz will take over as prime minister in 18 months.

In the meantime, Gantz will continue to face efforts to hold him accountable for crimes committed during Israel’s summer 2014 assault on Gaza, when he was the Israeli army chief of staff.

On Wednesday, Ismail Ziada filed an appeal against a ruling by a Dutch court granting Gantz and Israel’s former air force chief Amir Eshel immunity against a war crimes lawsuit.

Ziada, a Palestinian-Dutch citizen, has been suing Gantz and Eshel for a lethal bombing attack on his family’s home in Gaza. (...)

#Gaza #Procès

European Jewish Congress promotes anti-Muslim bigotry
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/european-jewish-congress-promotes-anti-muslim-bigotry

Earlier, it links to a series of AMCHA Initiative reports, one of which claims that “acts of classic anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students decreased 42 percent, while incidents of Israel-related anti-Semitic harassment increased 70 percent” between 2017 and 2018.

AMCHA is a far-right pro-Israel organization with a long history of spying on and harassing students and teachers who utter any support for Palestininian rights.

Its founder Tammi Rossman-Benjamin has been caught on video making virulently racist statements against students involved in Palestine solidarity activism.

AMCHA’s definition of “anti-Semitism” is so broad that it includes saying Israel is racist, that it practices apartheid or commits war crimes.

That would mean that dozens of former European foreign ministers and prime ministers who recently decried Israeli “apartheid” policies, as well as the authors of countless UN investigations into Israeli war crimes, are, according to AMCHA, nothing but anti-Semites.

It even appears that the authors of the European Jewish Congress report consider it anti-Semitic to discuss whether it is right to define criticism of Israel’s abuses of Palestinians as anti-Semitism.

It approvingly quotes Rossman-Benjamin claiming that debates about “whether Zionism is an implicit part of Jewish identity and who gets to define anti-Semitism or represent Jewishness” have “negative consequences for many Jewish students.”

Included in these apparently “anti-Semitic” tendencies is any opposition to the misleading and politically motivated IHRA definition of anti-Semitism that is widely promoted by Israel and its lobby.

Free speech advocates and human rights defenders have opposed official adoption of the definition because it is a tool for censorship that falsely equates criticism of Israel and its racist state ideology Zionism, on the one hand, with anti-Jewish bigotry, on the other.

AMCHA also defines as anti-Semitic any “student and faculty-sponsored boycott, divestment and sanction campaigns against Israel that are a means of demonizing lsrael and seek to harm the Jewish state.”

In short, this means that any data AMCHA provides are utterly unreliable, since the group considers any activism for Palestinian human rights to be “anti-Semitic” and harmful to Israel.

#Ilhan_Omar sur Twitter : “Let’s be clear: the goal of our trip was to witness firsthand what is happening on the ground in Palestine and hear from stakeholders —our job as Members of Congress. But since we were unable to fulfill our role as legislators, I am sharing what we would have seen. (#THREAD)” / Twitter
▻https://mobile.twitter.com/ilhanmn/status/1162413386535190528

« Live in fear, » Israeli officer warns German protesters on Facebook | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/live-fear-israeli-officer-warns-german-protesters-facebook

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En général je ne me prononce pas sur des conflits politiques dont j’ignore les détails internes, mais ce dernier temps je me sens personnellement agressé par le lobby sioniste.

D’abord sur intervention de cercles anti-palestiniens le maire de Berlin m’empêche de me faire une idée précise de la cause de Rasmeah Odeh en lui interdisant de parler en public. Puis on chasse le directeur du musée juif quand il ose soutenir l’idée que la crititique de l’état hébreux n’est pas forcément antisemite. Là j’apprend que le gouvernement d’Israël soutient un petits malfrat à nationalité complexe qui menace de la mort quiconque osant critiquer l’état sioniste.

Je comprend le caractère violent du conflit qui ravage la région du proche orient et je pense que notre gouvernement devrait tout faire pour nous protéger contre les acteurs violents de la région. Il n’en est rien. Je constate l’existence d’un front unique antipalestinien composé de politiciens et d’organisation de tous bords, de la droite chrétienne CSU en passant par le SPD et le parti Die Linke juqu’aux autonomes de gauche anticapitalistes.

Désormais c’est un fait indéniable qu’en Allemagne on ne peut pas critiquer le sionisme étatique sans craindre des sanctions dont la violence et la radicalité maximale ne dépendent que de notre propre statut. Un étranger qui ouvre sa bouche sera arrêté et expulsé, un citoyen allemand sera demis de ses fonctions s’il occupe un poste important. Oublies ta carrière politique et/ou professionelle si tu oses critiquer le sionisme. Si ce n’est pas assez pour te faire peur on garde pour toi un tueur autoproclamé formé par Tsahal .

Je ne veux toujours pas croire que les forces politiques majoritaires en Allemagne soutiennent des terroristes sinonistes qui menacent nos concitoyens. Mais qu’est-ce que j’en sais.

Bismarck et Dahlmann définisssent la politique comme l’art de ce qui est possible . D’après eux il suffit de comprendre ce qui est possible pour connaître les actions politiques envisageables. Force est de constater qu’un de ces jours on verra des tueurs sionistes s’en prendre aux antisionistes allemands sur le sol allemand.

Je ne sais ce que pensent les Allemands en général, mais je crains que l’attitude de l’Allemagne officielle nuise à ce que notre pays a encore de démocratique. L’état d’Israël ne trouvera pas de nouveaux amis tant que cette politique sera imposée. C’est dommage. On a quand même un passé national qui devrait nous inciter à combattre racisme, apartheid et injustice partout y compris en Palestine.

An Israeli military officer and government spokesperson is openly threatening civilians in Germany with violence or death.

On Friday, reservist Major Arye Sharuz Shalicar posted on Facebook an article about Israel’s undercover gunmen – so-called mistaravim – who dress up as Palestinians to abduct and injure civilians during protests against Israel’s military occupation.

Shalicar added his own comment: “Please share! The message of this article also goes out to all those in Germany who think they can burn the Star of David publicly without being punished for it. We know who you are, where you are and how we can bring you to justice. We determine time and place. Live in fear!”

The linked article is illustrated with a masked Israeli gunman waving a pistol with one hand as he grabs a Palestinian by the head with another.

Mistaravim have regularly been involved in Israeli assassinations of Palestinians, including inside a hospital room.

Threat of violence

Shalicar’s comment is an open threat of violence against civilians on German soil.

When one Facebook user in Germany objected to Shalicar – as a representative of a foreign government – taking justice into his own hands, the Israeli officer doubled down: “Nice to know that you as a German are ready to watch how Jewish symbols are burned on German soil as in the 1930s. I’m not ready for that. And I’m German too.”

Shalicar seems to be following the Israeli government line that the burning of Israel’s national flag as a form of protest against its decades-long military occupation and massive systematic violence against Palestinians – carried out in the name of the self-declared “Jewish state” – should be viewed as anti-Semitism.

There have been protests in many countries, including Germany, since US President Donald Trump legitimized Israel’s military occupation and ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem by recognizing the city as Israel’s capital earlier this month.

But Shalicar seems to be going a step further by threatening to harm or kill protesters in Germany, just as Israel routinely slays Palestinians who protest or resist its violent land thefts and incursions into their villages, cities and refugee camps by heavily armed occupation forces.

Yet there is reason for concern, as Israel’s Mossad spy agency does have a long history of carrying out assassinations around the world.
“Gangsta”

Major Arye Sharuz Shalicar, an Israeli army spokesperson, at the office of Trump “peace process” adviser Jason Greenblatt in November. (via Facebook)

Shalicar is currently a spokesperson for Israel’s intelligence minister Yisrael Katz.

According to the “About” section on his verified Facebook page, Shalicar was born in Germany in 1977 to parents who immigrated from Iran. He completed service in the German military as a paramedic in 1997, before settling in Israel in 2001, where he joined the army as a paratrooper.

After stints working for Germany’s public broadcaster ARD in Tel Aviv and for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he began working as an Israeli army spokesperson and media liaison to Europe in 2009.

Although his Facebook page now identifies him as a “former” spokesperson, Shalicar still provides an official Israeli army email address as a contact: shalicar@idf.gov.il.

In a 2015 tweet, the Israeli embassy in Berlin says it invited Shalicar to lecture to its staff about his life story.

Maj. Arye Sharuz Shalicar,IDF-Sprecher,erzählt unseren jungen Talenten seine persönliche Lebensgeschichte #iltrip15 pic.twitter.com/dxKtNbRGSX
— Botschaft Israel (@IsraelinGermany) December 1, 2015

Israeli media have promoted Shalicar as a former “gangsta” who spent his teenage years “fighting for his life in a Muslim-dominated suburb of Berlin.”

Shalicar also appears to have been received by the Trump administration. Last month he posted a photo of himself at the office of Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s “special representative” for the so-called peace process.

A request for comment has been sent to the German foreign ministry.

#Allemagne #Palestine #Israël #politique #terrorisme

French resist effort to censor criticism of Zionism
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, le 4 mars 2019
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/french-resist-effort-censor-criticism-zionism

The French president’s move, praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is part of a transatlantic campaign to weaponize often false accusations of anti-Semitism to smear and silence critics of Israel.

#antisémitisme #antisionisme #Palestine #censure #Liberté_d'expression #BDS #criminalisation_des_militants

Compilation sur le sujet :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/762051

US court throws out lawsuit against academic boycott of Israel | The Electronic Intifada

▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/us-court-throws-out-lawsuit-against-academic-boycott-israel

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A federal judge in Washington, DC, on Monday dismissed a lawsuit against the American Studies Association over its decision to support the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

The ruling is a significant blow to efforts by Israel lobby groups to use courts to harass, intimidate and silence supporters of Palestinian rights in US universities – a tactic known as lawfare.

In April 2016, several current and former members of the ASA filed the lawsuit against the group over its 2013 resolution backing the academic boycott.

In his 20-page ruling, US District Judge Rudolph Contreras wrote that the plaintiffs had no standing to file a lawsuit seeking damages on behalf of the ASA, and that their individual damage claims came nowhere near the $75,000 minimum required for them to seek relief in federal court.

At most, the individual plaintiffs could seek damages of a few hundred dollars to cover membership dues they allege were misappropriated, but they would have to find some other venue to pursue their claims, the judge found.

“The court basically said, in no uncertain words, that the plaintiffs suing ASA lied when they claimed to have ‘suffered significant economic and reputational damage.’” Radhika Sainath, senior attorney with the civil rights group Palestine Legal, told The Electronic Intifada. “But, as the court explained, ‘nowhere’ in the lawsuit could the plaintiffs explain what that damage was. It didn’t pass the smell test.”

Israeli election ad boasts Gaza bombed back to “stone ages” | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-election-ad-boasts-gaza-bombed-back-stone-ages

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back to “stone ages”

Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 21 January 2019

Benny Gantz, the former Israeli army chief, is bragging about how much killing and destruction he committed in Gaza in a series of campaign videos for his new political party posted on YouTube and social media over the weekend.

Gantz hopes to replace Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister in elections scheduled for April.

One of the videos, above, shows drone footage of a devastated neighborhood in Gaza in August 2014, following Israel’s 51-day assault on the territory.

The video’s title includes the words “Parts of Gaza were returned to the stone ages.”

Against the swell of dramatic music, captions on screen announce, “6,231 targets destroyed,” and “1,364 terrorists killed.”

The ad then claims that this carnage brought “3.5 years of quiet.”

A second video displays a kill-counter on screen racking up bodies until the number 1,364 is reached. In the background Palestinians are seen conducting funerals.

The video is another depraved celebration of killing.

All the videos contain the words “Only the strong win.”

And they close with Gantz’s campaign slogan “Israel before everything,” which could just as well be translated as the Trumpian “Israel first.”
Admission of war crimes

France-Israel propaganda «season» ends in failure | The Electronic Intifada

▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/france-israel-propaganda-season-ends-failure

A major propaganda effort sponsored by the French and Israeli governments has been a failure, Israeli officials are acknowledging.

The so-called Saison France-Israël, or France-Israel Season, was a series of hundreds of “cultural” events backed by both governments, running for six months until the end of November.

“We were hoping that culture would have a diplomatic impact. We put an enormous amount of money into this operation, which had zero success regarding Israel’s image in France, or that of France here,” an Israeli diplomatic source told the newspaper Le Monde last week.

BDS France, a group that supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, is celebrating the admission of failure as a victory for activism in support of Palestinian rights.

The France-Israel Season was an attempted “whitewashing operation, cleansing the state of Israel of its crimes against the Palestinian people, its constant violations of international law and universal human rights,” BDS France stated on Saturday, noting that dozens of French artists, including legendary film director Jean-Luc Godard, had declared they would not cooperate with it.

#BDS

US support for Israel eroding, but not among Trump voters, poll finds |

The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/us-support-israel-eroding-not-among-trump-voters-poll-finds

Back in January, I wrote that President Donald Trump’s tight embrace of Israel may accelerate Israel’s loss of support among key segments of the American public.

Now, a new YouGov survey for The Economist confirms that support for Israel aligns more than ever with Trump’s base – a hotbed of right-wing, white nationalist and Christian Zionist views – while eroding among other Americans.

Today, just 37 percent of those surveyed are prepared to describe Israel as an “ally” of the United States – a remarkably low number given the record-setting military aid Israel receives and the constant professions of “unbreakable bonds” between the two countries from American politicians across the political spectrum.

Overall, another 25 percent say Israel is “friendly,” while nine percent view it as “unfriendly,” 23 percent are unsure and six percent say Israel is an outright “enemy.”

Tunisie : le mouvement BDS appelle au boycott d’un navire israélien
►http://geopolis.francetvinfo.fr/tunisie-le-mouvement-bds-appelle-au-boycott-d-un-navire-israel

Campgne victorieuse :

▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/campaign-forces-israels-zim-halt-shipments-tunisia

▻https://www.raialyoum.com/index.php/%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%aa%d8%b5%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%8d-%d8%ac%d8%af%d9%8

#BDS #tunisie

Rashida Tlaib, première femme musulmane à être élue au Congrès américain
▻https://www.huffpostmaghreb.com/entry/rashida-tlaib-premiere-femme-musulmane-a-etre-elue-au-congres-ameri

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Il s’agissait de primaires, mais il n’y aura pas d’opposant républicain.

ÉTATS-UNIS - À quelques mois des élections de mi-mandat, plusieurs États américains vivent ces derniers jours un avant-goût de ce rendez-vous politique incontournable pour les opposants au président Trump. Dans la nuit du mardi au mercredi 8 août, l’État du Michigan organisait les primaires démocrates pour choisir celles ou ceux qui représenteront le parti pour l’élection au Congrès, qui aura lieu en novembre prochain. 

Un scrutin qui a vu la victoire de la progressiste Rashida Tlaib. Résultat qui fait d’elle, pour l’instant, la première femme musulmane à être élue au Congrès américain, et la première américano-palestinienne, cette dernière étant sans opposition, rapporte The Independant.

Une victoire à plus de 33% des voix à l’occasion d’une élection décrite par cette dernière au Detroit News comme étant un “joyeux chaos”. Elle a notamment obtenu le soutien des Justice Democrats, un groupe progressiste au sein du parti, proche de l’ancien candidat à la primaire démocrate Bernie Sanders, rapporte le HuffPost américain.

Israel fears exposure of its dirty tactics against BDS.
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-fears-exposure-its-dirty-tactics-against-bds

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One of the more troubling revelations in Horovitz’s report for The Times of Israel is that Kela Shlomo may already be involved in dirty tricks and smear campaigns against Palestine activists – the same kind of black-ops in which the strategic affairs ministry has itself reportedly been directly involved.

Kela Shlomo co-founder Kuperwasser insisted to The Times of Israel that his organization has no connection with two shadowy Israeli private intelligence firms involved in dirty tricks campaigns, Black Cube and Psy-Group – though Kuperwasser speculated that both firms could have worked directly for the Israeli government.

Last year it was revealed that disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein hired Black Cube to silence and intimidate victims of his alleged sexual assaults.

More recently, it emerged that Black Cube had been tasked by an unidentified client reportedly close to the Trump administration with trying to gather damaging information on top Obama administration officials involved in negotiating the breakthrough 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

That agreement was bitterly opposed by Israel’s government and abandoned by President Donald Trump in May.

According to The Times of Israel, Psy-Group was involved in creating a now-deleted website called outlawbds.com containing the names, email addresses and photos of individuals believed to support BDS.

Last September, The Electronic Intifada received an email from outlawbds.com that was copied to a number of other media organizations, proclaiming that outlawbds.com had already published 100 profiles of activists.

“We want these individuals to know their actions are not going unnoticed and someone will lawfully act to stop them,” the email stated.

But while denying a direct tie to Black Cube and Psy-Group, Kuperwasser would not deny that Kela Shlomo works with a third shadowy firm, Israel Cyber Shield.

New Amnesty leader calls BDS a tested “tool of resistance” | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/new-amnesty-leader-calls-bds-tested-tool-resistance
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It will be interesting to see if Naidoo pushes Amnesty to take stronger positions on holding Israel accountable.

“Excessive force”
Last week, Amnesty urged Israel to avoid “excessive force” against Palestinians taking part in Great March of Return rallies in the occupied Gaza Strip.

Israel has killed dozens and injured thousands of unarmed protesters since 30 March.

“The Israeli authorities must respect the Palestinians’ right to peaceful protest and, in the event that there is violence, use only the force necessary to address it,” the group’s Magdalena Mughrabi stated. “Under international law, lethal force can only be used when unavoidable to protect against imminent threats to life.”

Amnesty relies on international law to defend Israel’s “right” to violence against an occupied people.

But while encouraging Israel to use less force against Palestinians, Amnesty acknowledges no Palestinian right to self-defense or resistance to occupation, only the right to “peaceful protest.”

Regardless of the intention, this effectively privileges and endorses Israeli violence – a perverse position for a human rights organization in the overall context of Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid over Palestinians.

Yet the Palestinian right to self-defense and resistance – should Palestinians choose to exercise it – is clearly recognized by international law, if not by Amnesty International.

#droits_humains #contadictions