UK grassroots campaign group We Believe in Israel (WBII) has condemned NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) for issuing a new report today that accuses Israel of “apartheid”, a crime against humanity.
WBII Director Luke Akehurst said:
“It’s right and proper that NGOs like HRW should monitor the human rights situation of the Palestinians, on the same basis that they do any other conflict situation globally, and call out Israel if its specific policies or actions are inappropriate.
But HRW seems to have a disproportionate obsession with Israel.
This most recent report is full of inaccuracies.
The “apartheid” allegation is a lie. Israel’s complex relationship with the Palestinians, based on an occupation that resulted from a defensive war, horrendous security dilemmas about protecting civilians from terrorist suicide bombings, and a stalled peace process, deserves nuanced analysis and solutions, not blanket one-sided condemnation. It doesn’t bear any resemblance to the horrific racist subjugation of a majority black population by the white minority in apartheid South Africa.
The “apartheid” accusation is a long-term political project to delegitimise the world’s only Jewish state and smear a state created as a refuge from genocidal racism as being racist.
It is the intellectual pretext for the pernicious anti-Israel boycott movement.
It harms the prospects for a renewed peace process by seeking to demonise, indeed criminalise one side, rather than to truly understand the complexity of a conflict between the national liberation movements of two peoples, which will only be solved through the principle of two states for two peoples.”