Related article(s)

• Amnesty International & Israel: Say it isn't so!, CounterPunch, 31 October 2002
• Double Standards and Curious Silences / Amnesty International: A False Beacon?, CounterPunch, 13 October 2004
• Interview with Francis Boyle: Amnesty on Jenin, CovertAction Quarterly, Summer 2002

Commentary (by a person who is not a member of the UCC Palestine Solidarity Campaign ):

This article appeared in several places, including Counterpunch; the version in this database is an updated version provided by the author. NB: The CounterPunch version has unfortunately been truncated after the website's upgrade.

This article is also available in Spanish.

It took years for AI to finally recognize a handful of Palestinian prisoners of conscience, it took decades to recognize the Israeli torture practices, and it took decades before AI ever uttered the term "war crimes" as a label for Israeli actions. Even when it used such terms it did so in an ambivalent fashion and with a frequency resembling the sexual habits of Pandas -- it seldom occurs, and then when it happens it is difficult to determine if it really happened. AI's current stance indicates that it is possible to go through the motions, use the "human rights" jargon and produce statements that are supposedly useful to Israelis and Palestinians. In reality, its stance vis-à-vis the Palestinians is biased, ineffective, confused and sometimes injurious. In the face of on going ethnic cleansing AI waits hundreds of days to issue reports, and it barely raises its voice pertaining the systematic and mass abuses of human rights. It is a shameful stance.

To clarify Amnesty's position on Israel-Palestine, the rape analogy is again useful. The Israeli onslaught against the Palestinians and the decades of dispossession are equivalent to the gang rape of a woman held at knifepoint. While this is going on Amnesty's role is akin to standing on the sidelines wringing its hands and bleating occasionally: "both sides must make human rights central to their relationship," "this activity is making the woman uncomfortable," "the rapists must freeze all f***ing activity," and "resisting the rapists constitutes a crime against humanity."