Amnesty International Investigation Concludes Israel Is Committing Genocide

[al bupp]

23. Amnesty Israel has no credibility on the topic of genocide in Gaza

from: https://forward.com/opinion/681370/why-i-resigned-as-chairman-of-amnesty-israel/

Entitled: Why I resigned as chairman of Amnesty Israel

After Amnesty International released a report last Thursday calling the war in Gaza a genocide, Amnesty’s Israeli branch quickly issued a statement saying most of its members don’t believe genocide has occurred. Some in Amnesty Israel alleged the report was biased, arguing for a forgone conclusion. Others went further, claiming that the international movement abandoned its commitment to equality in the first place.

But even before the report came out — one week before, to be exact — I resigned my position as chair of the board of Amnesty Israel. I didn’t step down because of the imminent controversy over the conclusions of Amnesty International’s report. I resigned because I could no longer chair a branch that did not treat Palestinians as equal partners, and I could not sign off on a critique of Amnesty International’s report that pretends to be an expert minority opinion, but is instead little more than the expression of an Israeli-Jewish worldview, to the exclusion of Palestinian voices.

Let’s start with the Amnesty International report itself. It was written by a diverse set of legal experts, and was revised multiple times to adhere to stricter standards of proof. It is far from the first report prepared by legal experts to reach the conclusion that genocide occurred, but it is by far the most in-depth legal analysis on the issue. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the report’s conclusions, the critique of it ought to be the kind that is commanded by serious scholarship.

Amnesty Israel’s position on the report was prepared by two Israeli Jewish staff members who are not legal scholars, with external assistance from Israeli legal experts. What Amnesty Israel was lacking in legal expertise it could have perhaps offered with an analysis that is instead rich in its diversity of perspective, having had Palestinian staff and board members working together with the Israeli Jewish ones to write something truly unique on this issue and contribute a perspective that would be difficult for outside experts to replicate. But instead, no Palestinians had any input on Amnesty Israel’s analysis of the genocide report.

There's more at the link.