Amnesty International Reveals its Bias in its Statement on Nakba Day Infiltrations

Amnesty International published a statement demanding Israel investigate its actions in response to the Nakba Day border assault by activists in Lebanon and Syria. The statement ‘s wording and focus reveals the organization’s sharp bias.

From the Amnesty statement:

The Israeli government and military have characterized the protests as “riots” and attempts to “infiltrate” into Israel illegally, and in several of the protests, demonstrators threw rocks towards Israeli troops. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 13 IDF personnel and three Israeli civilians were lightly injured by rocks, and protesters tried to breach the fence at the Lebanese and Syrian borders. Israeli officials have not claimed that any protesters fired on Israeli troops.

Amnesty uses “scarequotes” for Israeli descriptors like infiltrate and riots while omitting similar qualifiers in describing the activists as protesters and demonstrators even though those who engage in rock-throwing with the intent to harm and breaching border fences are appropriately described as rioters and infiltrators.

Two paragraphs later, Amnesty implies that Israeli forces fired on activists as they “marched towards the Israeli border at Maroun al-Ras.” But the Israelis claim that they only fired on the activists who tried to tear down the fence and breach the border. The difference here is significant and Amnesty must know that, yet it misrepresents the situation.

Amnesty’s bias is equally evident in its description of the border infiltration in the Golan Heights:

Palestinian and Druze protesters in the Syrian-administered part of the Golan succeeded in breaching the UN-patrolled border and entering the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied part. Israeli forces opened fire, killing two demonstrators and injuring more than 20, some of them critically. The IDF and Israeli police sealed off the town and conducted house-to-house searches for “infiltrators”, who were forcibly returned to Syria.

Why are there scarequotes for infiltrators? Is there really any question that those who illegally crossed the border and hid in an Israeli town are infiltrators? Could it be that Amnesty uses scarequotes to make a subtle political statement that it does not regard the infiltrators from Lebanon and Syria as infiltrators because Amnesty does not recognize Israel’s legitimate sovereignty over its territory?

Amnesty goes on to condemn Israel for blocking Israeli Arabs from joining with the demonstrators on the Israeli side of the border, apparently unconcerned with the riot potential that would have entailed.

It describes Israeli legislation to reduce government funding of organizations that commemorate “Israel’s Independence Day or the day of the establishment of the state as a day of mourning” as a “major assault on freedom of expression in Israel.”

One will look in vain for any mention by Amnesty International of the actions of the Syrian government and the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah in transporting the participants and fomenting the riots.