“Anti-Semitism from the left” – Greens withdraw from Amnesty for disparaging Israel
Amnesty Secretary-General Agnès Callamard accuses Israel of ‘apartheid’
The human rights organization Amnesty International has accused Israel of “apartheid”. Palestinians are treated as “inferior” citizens, according to Amnesty Secretary-General Agnès Callamard.
After Amnesty International’s accusation of “apartheid” against the Jewish state, Green Party leader Omid Nouripour made it clear: “We stand with Israel.” There has also been criticism from other Greens. The German Amnesty section is desperately looking for a language.
Dhe case turns into a debacle for the human rights organization. After Amnesty International held a so extensive and one-page text published about Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and described Israel’s actions as “apartheid”, the organization came under pressure, especially in Germany.
Greens leader Omid Nouripour is “alarmed” by the Amnesty scandal
Source: dpa; Getty Images; Montage: infographic WORLD
She must be particularly concerned about criticism from a party in which Amnesty was particularly valued. It’s the green ones. “Factually anti-Semitic” act Amnesty, tweeted the Greens member of the Bundestag Kai Gehring, his parliamentary colleague Sven-Christian Kindler also called the text on Twitter “dangerous” and “unworthy of Amnesty”.
Party leader Omid Nouripour affirmed: “The vocabulary of the report by the well-known human rights organization is very strange.” The text “does not do justice to the massive security threat to Israel,” Nouripour told WELT.
Nouripour also speaks of anti-Semitism: “Anti-Semitism is out of the question. It is primarily from the right, but of course also from the left.”
The Green leader also refers to his childhood in Iran. “In Islamic countries, anti-Semitism is sometimes a state doctrine. As a child in Iran, before school started I had to shout: ‘Death to the USA, death to Israel!’ The dimensions of the Shoah were first explained to me in Germany. Committing to this is a key task for all Democrats. That’s why I’m always alarmed when there are ideological attacks on Israel that call into question the right to exist.”
In the past few days, experts have interpreted the Amnesty text as an attack on Israel’s right to exist. For example, because the demand for a “right of return” for all Palestinian refugees is accepted there. Because this demand should also include all descendants of those who fled and were driven out after the founding of the State of Israel, 5.7 million people would have to move to a country where they never lived. Then it would be over with the Jewish state.
Nouripour counters this logic: “We stand by Israel’s side, that will not change.” The Greens leader explicitly emphasizes that his party criticizes Israeli actions. “As a human rights party, we naturally also talk to our Israeli friends about whether the Israeli government’s actions in the occupied territories are correct. There are also many partners on the Israeli side for these talks.”
That of the Greens had been similar before Annalena Bärbock led Foreign Ministry expressed. “We not only address critical incidents directly with our Israeli partners, we also comment on them publicly,” said a spokesman, but stressed: “We reject terms such as apartheid as well as the one-sided focus of criticism on Israel.”
Marlene Schönberger, member of the Greens in the Bundestag, addresses a special aspect that Nouripour refers to as “anti-Semitism from the left”. Although she appreciates Amnesty for the “worldwide commitment to human rights”. But “unfortunately”, according to Schönberger, “it has been observed for a long time that problematic attitudes towards Israel are not adequately contradicted in the organization”. She would therefore “welcome” it if the German section “dissociates itself from the statements from the United Kingdom”.
Amnesty Germany’s sentences “on their own behalf” deleted
In fact, the report is attributed to British amnesty groups. There are tendencies towards hostility to Israel with anti-Semitic overtones among leftists there. The reasons include unreflected anti-colonialism, mental consequences of the British failure in the League of Nations mandate over Palestine and the current influence of Arab communities on the British left.
The local Greens are distancing themselves from this leftist hostility toward Israel. Schönberger also demands this from the German Amnesty section, but stated on Wednesday: “What I have heard from Amnesty International Germany so far, I do not understand as distancing.”
By then, the German section had put the text on its website and it provided with sentences “on their own behalf”.. In it, the Holocaust and contemporary anti-Semitism were mentioned, followed by: “This gives rise to a special responsibility for the German Amnesty section. In the national current and historical context, an objective, factual debate on the classification made by the report is only possible with difficulty. In order to counteract the risk of instrumentalization or misinterpretation of the report, the German Amnesty section will not plan or carry out any activities related to this report.”
That seemed distant, but could also be understood as if Germans could not discuss Israel objectively because of their history. Which is not far removed from far-right clichés.
The phrases “on our own behalf” disappeared from the website on Wednesday. But it stays the Israel text. The press office did not provide any information on the content, but said they were “optimistic” that a “revision” of the website would be “completed” by Thursday evening.
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