In nearly 300 pages of grotesque libel last week, Amnesty International delegitimized 74 years of Israel’s existence as a Jewish State.
The amount of manpower and money wasted in this report by a faux “human rights” group is stunning, since Israel is clearly not an apartheid state.
The ADL refusal to say the truth about Amnesty indicates that in the campaign against Israel, it is not on the side of the Jews..Op-ed. https://t.co/eA95qNtYL3
— Israel National News – Arutz Sheva (@ArutzSheva_En) February 6, 2022
More than 20% of Israel’s population of about nine million are Arabs. They have full rights under Israeli law. Nearly 90% of them identify as Israeli Arabs, not Palestinian Arabs, and if there were to be a Palestinian state, the vast majority prefer to remain Israeli citizens.
By contrast, thriving Jewish communities once existed in the Arab world, yet today, there are almost no Jews in the Muslim world. How and why? Jews were expelled and fled. No “human rights” groups rushed to their rescue either.
Meanwhile, Israel’s monumental failure to discriminate against its Arab citizens began on day one, when its founding document established that “The State of Israel … will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.”
In the Knesset, where Israel’s laws are made, Israeli Arabs have the right to vote and form their own political parties. Today, there are 14 Arab Knesset members out of only 120 total.
Inside the courts, where Israel’s laws are upheld, numerous Arabs have served as judges at various levels of the judicial system, including on the Israeli Supreme Court.
Israeli Arabs serve in the military, often voluntarily, with some rising to become officers, commanding Israeli Jews.
In the Israeli medical realm, Arab doctors treat Jewish patients, and Jewish doctors treat Arab patients. This is a clear-cut difference from apartheid South Africa where blacks were not allowed into white medical facilities. It is even common for Palestinian Arabs from Gaza to receive medical treatment in Israel’s hospitals.
Stroll through Israeli cities or drive its highways, and every street sign has Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
Visit an Israeli university, and you’ll often see Israeli Arabs in the classrooms and courtyards, speaking Arabic, and studying together with Jews. Not many “apartheid” regimes allow such arrangements of integration and equality.
Rather than being discriminated against, Israeli Arabs are an equal pillar of Israeli society.
The former South African policies consisted of racial segregation, along with social and economic discrimination against non-whites. Israel is precisely the opposite. Only the United States could possibly claim to be a more integrated society.
Moreover, why has odious Amnesty International never questioned the legitimacy of any other nation? Israel has been under siege since before it achieved independence — invaded on its first day in 1948 by six neighboring armies calling for its extermination — and continuously offered deep concessions toward a quixotic peace.
Amnesty also ignores real apartheid regimes next door, like the recalcitrant Palestinian Authority, which demands all Jews be removed from their ancestral homeland and presumably pushed into the Mediterranean Sea.
Repugnant organizations like Amnesty are dangerously dishonest, inaccurate and, since corporate media will not, must be condemned by freedom lovers everywhere.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
