Criticism of Amnesty International’s German section erupted in Palestinian public opinion after a delegation from the human rights organization travelled to Ramallah.
On Tuesday 23 January, an Amnesty International delegation visited Ramallah in the occupied West Bank and met with Palestinian human rights defenders. The delegation included several senior leaders of the and members of its German branch.
On Wednesday, the local Palestinian news site “Ultra Palestine” published a critical report on Palestinian NGOs’ meetings with the delegation, highlighting Amnesty Germany’s past positions on Palestine.
The report highlights Amnesty Germany’s support to Amnesty International’s Israeli affiliate, despite Amnesty Israel’s failure to call for a ceasefire during the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza and despite the affiliate’s airing of an advertisement showing a false and erroneous Israeli narrative about the 7 October occasions.
The report also indicated Amnesty Germany’s discrepancies with Amnesty International’s general positions on Palestine. The most significant of these was Amnesty Germany’s hesitance to endorse Amnesty International’s report of 2022 accusing Israel of the crime of Apartheid.
Amnesty International told TNA that its delegation was on a “work stopover in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) to meet with local NGOs, victims of human rights violations and other communities. “
Amnesty also said that Amnesty International’s more sensible administrators led the delegation, which included members of the German section, who “joined the holiday to better understand the human rights situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, in order to better talk about human rights violations, adding life under Israel’s apartheid system, with their internal audiences, as well as campaign and advocacy efforts before the German authorities. “
Germany’s criminalization of Palestinian solidarity movements has been condemned by Amnesty International, adding its German affiliate. But Amnesty Germany’s condemnation of the German state’s repression of solidarity with Palestine and the criminalization of complaints against Israel is also denounced as not in line with Amnesty International’s strategy. according to the Ultra Palestine report.
Last year in May, Amnesty Germany published a legal analysis of the Berlin Assembly Authority’s blanket bans on demonstrations to commemorate the Palestinian Nakba. The report stated that the bans violated the rights to assembly and protest. It urged German authorities “to give full and careful consideration to less restrictive measures” and said that restrictions to these rights must be “proportionate” and “content neutral”.
While the report makes no reference to Germany’s systematic repression of solidarity with Palestine, it nevertheless highlights the discriminatory justification of the bans by the German government on the basis of the ethnic origin and age of the protesters, calling them an expression of “institutionalized racism,” which it denounces. “Discriminatory stereotypes and anti-Arab racism intersecting with anti-Muslim racism opposed to an entire demographic organization. “
“International human rights teams have complex positions on Palestine and can rarely be more courageous,” Ubai Aboudi, director of the Bisan Center for Research and Development, told TNA.
“We want to meet and work with those organizations based on the commonalities that we have,” Aboudi said.
“It is true, however, that despite the official policy of those organizations, some of the other people who work there have private anti-Palestinian positions influenced by racist views, and this manifests itself in various ways, and we want to talk about this with our partners,” he added.
Amnesty International called for a ceasefire in Gaza on October 26 and declared the “risk of genocide” on January 10, as Israel’s war on Gaza at the time killed some 18,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, 70% of whom were children.
Israel continues its war against the besieged coastal enclave, killing some 30,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, adding more than 10,000 children and 7,000 women. Approximately 90 percent of Gaza’s Palestinian population has been displaced, while Israeli forces continue to destroy as much civilian infrastructure in the Strip as possible.
The UN has warned that a “hellish scenario” is unfolding in the Gaza Strip, aggravated by Israel’s general blockade of food, medicine, electricity and fuel, as well as the destruction or dismantling of hospitals.