tell amnesty enough!

By Avi Abraham Benlolo and Jerry S. Grafstein

February 4, 2022

On June 1, 2001, a Palestinian terrorist blew himself up outside a Tel Aviv night club, killing 21 Israelis, 16 of whom were teenagers. Two months later, another Palestinian suicide terrorist entered the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and killed 15 Israelis, including seven children and a pregnant woman and wounded 130 others. In March of 2002, during a Passover Seder in a hotel in Netanya, a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered 30 civilians and injured 140 others in one of the deadliest massacres.

In response to the more than 1,378 civilians murdered by Palestinians terrorists from Gaza and the West Bank since September 2000, Israel had little choice but to build a security barrier to protect its citizens from continued mass murder. As a result, suicide-terrorism stopped almost immediately and while terror incidents still occur, they are now less co-ordinated by the Islamist groups that try to infiltrate the Jewish nation daily. The security barrier is not an “apartheid wall.” It is there to save lives and bring about peace. Good fences sometimes do make good neighbours.

Thus, this week’s shameful release of a new report by Amnesty International accusing Israel of “apartheid” in its treatment of Palestinians is devoid of this context. Unlike any other nation on Earth, Israel faces unrelenting violent threats from the various terror organizations that are relentlessly engaged in undermining the Jewish state. Just this past May for instance, Hamas started an unprovoked war with Israel and launched 4,600 rockets at its civilian population. When Israel’s next-door neighbour, Bashar al-Assad in Syria was threatened by a civil uprising, he brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of his own citizens — and continues to do so. Where was Amnesty International?

Israel’s detractors never seem to worry about the safety and security of Jewish lives in Israel. They never run to Israel’s defence when Israel is attacked. They never issue scathing reports, initiate global campaigns or call on the International Criminal Court to take action against the incitement of hate and war crimes targeting Israeli civilians. Instead, they are quick to come down on the “Jews,” especially if they are trying to protect themselves.

But we say, "Never again." When the Jewish people were herded from their homes, into ghettos and then to concentration camps where they were gassed, the world stood by and did nothing against this vile antisemitic act. So, Amnesty, your report means nothing to us. As Jewish people, we will fight back to protect our families this time. At the same time, we will always and relentlessly stand at the forefront of human rights advocacy, promoting freedom and peaceful co-existence.

Clearly, it makes little difference to so-called human rights advocates that Israel is a free and democratic country. It's incomprehensible to understand that a report is issued calling Israel an apartheid state while for the first time in history, an Arab political party is part of the governing coalition of the country. Israel’s citizens also represent every ethnic and religious group under the sun. It's also irrational to believe that Israel is intentionally ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population given the fact this community has increased from approximately 500,000 in 1948 to nearly six million in 2021 in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The numbers speak for themselves and completely disqualify Amnesty’s underlying premise.

Israel’s tormentors have been planning this assault since the United Nations' infamous Durban conference in 2001. The stage was set to falsely equate Israel with the former South African apartheid regime, in an attempt to delegitimize, demonize and disrupt the very existence of the Jewish State. The Amnesty report regurgitates this established campaign and is calling for “Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their homes where they or their families once lived,” which it's known would spell a demographic end to the Jewish State. Israel could not possibly absorb millions of Palestinian refugees who have been purposely held up in refugee camps without losing its Jewish character. Everyone knows this.

We are pleased to note that most of Israel’s allies, including the Americans and Germans, have denounced the Amnesty report. We have called out Canadian leaders including our own prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to follow suit. As we wrote to the prime minister and the former leader of the official opposition this week, no other country is similarly harassed by the international community. Because Israel is the very embodiment of the Jewish people, the biased double standard practiced through these unrelenting attacks can only be understood as antisemitism. In fact, given the growth of violent antisemitism around the world, the Amnesty report is blatantly irresponsible and will trigger ever increasing antisemitic attacks, which are already at an all-time high around the world.

National Post

Avi Abraham Benlolo is the founder and chairman of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative. Jerry S. Grafstein, Q.C., is a former Canadian Senator.

“If Israel weren’t a Jewish State, no one would dare make such a claim against it.”- Yair Lapid

January 31, 2022: The Abraham Global Peace (AGPI) Initiative joins The European Jewish Congress (EJC) and Israel in raising alarm over another report falsely branding Israel an apartheid state. EJC’s President Moshe Kantor is  calling an Amnesty International report “part of a coordinated diplomatic lynch against Israel."

The Jewish world and its friends are bracing for tomorrow’s reported release of an Amnesty  UK report entitled “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity." According to NGO Monitor, “like many previous NGO publications, Amnesty’s report manipulates and distorts international law, Israeli policy, and events on the ground, as well as denies the Jewish people their right to sovereign equality and self-determination."

Israel’s Foreign Minister, Yair Lapid, said that “Israel isn’t perfect, but we are a democracy committed to international law, open criticism, with a free press and a strong and independent judicial system. Amnesty doesn’t call Syria, where the regime has murdered half a million of its own citizens, an apartheid state, norIran nor other murderous regimes around the world – only Israel."  

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lior Haiat said, “Israel rejects all the false accusations that are made by Amnesty International UK, stating that the report is a “collection of lies," “is biased,” and “copies from other reports from anti-Israel organizations."

“To those of us who have been treated by Israeli-Arab citizens in Israeli hospitals; who have sat down with Israeli-Arab citizens in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament); who have lived with Israeli-Arab neighbours; and who have met many who serve in Israel’s Defence Forces, the assertion that Israel is an apartheid state by any means is nothing more than a flagrant lie," said Avi Abraham Benlolo, AGPI’s Founder and Chairman. 

“Those of us who know that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East that allows for people of every religious faith to live freely and equally – we see right through baseless accusations” added Benlolo.

As a global human rights organization comprised of leaders representing all faiths and cultures, AGPI is uniquely positioned to say on behalf of Canadians that we reject all claims to single out Israel and to slander it with accusations.  AGPI's leaders believe the international pile-on Israel strengthens Antisemitism, creates incitement, and disrupts attempts to make peace in the region. 

AGPI calls on international human rights organizations to stop inflicting a double-standard on Israel by focusing unrelenting attention on the only Jewish state in the world. AGPI further calls on NGOs to join it in finding positive and productive efforts to help foster peace in the region.