Reform Movement: Amnesty report profoundly disappointing, replete with bad info

The Reform Movement strongly condemns Amnesty’s report accusing Israel of apartheid, saying that as a critic of “the occupation” and advocate for Palestinian rights, it expresses “profound disappointment” with the organization.

It says the document is “replete with discredited and inaccurate allegations, including a deeply wrong accusation of apartheid.” It “reflects Amnesty’s inability to comprehend the history, context, and nuance of the situation in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, or the very real threats to Israel’s survival and security that it has faced from its very founding.”

The allegation of apartheid “comes with a false equivalency to the institutions of formal and rigid segregation, denial of political and social rights, and basic dehumanization practiced by the South African regime over decades. Whatever Amnesty’s intent to differentiate the usage of apartheid from its most common association with South Africa, they have failed.”

The statement further says that “Amnesty’s failures to address Israel’s legitimate security concerns and the very real genocidal threats it faces endanger the existence of a Jewish democratic State of Israel. Its call for a full return of refugees and for reparations; its support for BDS and the economic and diplomatic isolation of Israel; its implication that Israel’s very founding and continuation as a Jewish State was a violation of the Apartheid Convention; its failure to place any responsibility on the PA for the change of conditions that could allow for greater rights and safety for all; and the failure to recognize that only a two-state solution can best resolve the concerns addressed in this report are all deeply concerning and add to its misguided nature.”