Why is the State Department still taking Amnesty International seriously?

Published February 4, 2022 2:00pm ET



Amnesty International’s latest report defining Israel as an “apartheid” state since its founding has stirred up controversy.

On the substance, the group is wrong, as Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid and U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch have eloquently shown. The group’s methodology is also flawed. After the release of the report, Lazar Berman, the Times of Israel’s diplomatic correspondent, interviewed Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard and the organization’s Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director Philip Luther. Suffice to say, both Callamard and Luther embarrassed themselves with inconsistency and general ignorance. Berman exposed the group’s hypocrisy with regard to China and the Uyghurs, as well as its uncertainty about its own statistics, and solicited an apparent admission that Amnesty considers the Jewish presence in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem an illegal settlement.

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