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WASHINGTON (JTA) — An Amnesty Worldwide official stated that the group is against Israel persevering with to exist as a Jewish state.
“We’re against the concept — and this, I believe, is an existential a part of the talk — that Israel ought to be preserved as a state for the Jewish individuals,” Paul O’Brien, the human rights monitor’s US director, stated in a luncheon this week with the Girls’s Nationwide Democratic Membership in Washington.
Jewish Insider first reported the remarks. O’Brien additionally stated he didn’t imagine polls displaying overwhelming US Jewish help for Israel.
Taking a place on whether or not and the way a longtime state ought to live on is uncommon for organizations with obligations restricted to monitoring compliance with worldwide legal guidelines governing freedoms and human rights. O’Brien’s feedback instantly drew a torrent of condemnation from Jewish teams.
“If there was any doubt about Amnesty’s credibility as a reputable voice of authority, it’s now abundantly clear that they’re firmly entrenched within the cadre of extremist anti-Israel provocateurs,” William Daroff, the CEO of the Convention of Presidents of Main American Jewish Organizations, stated Friday in an interview, Earlier he had tweeted that O’Brien’s remarks have been outrageous. “It’s clear that their true imaginative and prescient is a Center East with out Israel as a Jewish state.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, referred to as on O’Brien to apologize to Jews.
“Your obsessive, relentless give attention to Israel, and the erasure of the Jewish proper to self-determination illustrates a harmful diploma of bias,” he tweeted.
Amnesty Worldwide Headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand, September 8, 2015 (chameleonseye/istock)
O’Brien stated he didn’t imagine polls that confirmed the overwhelming majority of American Jews again Israel.
“I imagine my intestine tells me that what Jewish individuals on this nation need is to know that there’s a sanctuary that could be a secure and sustainable place that the Jews, the Jewish individuals can name dwelling,” he stated, apparently referring to a concept superior by a small cadre of intellectuals that imagines a binational Jewish-Palestinian state that will act as a secure haven for Jews.
Jewish teams, together with teams which might be typically important of Israel, have been particularly offended by O’Brien’s assumptions about what Jews suppose.
“Polling exhibits the overwhelming majority of American Jews, like J Avenue, help Israel’s future as a democratic state and homeland for the Jewish individuals,” J Avenue, the liberal Jewish Center East coverage group stated on Twitter. “Amnesty USA can be well-served to stay to its experience in human rights + worldwide legislation — and never attempt to assess Jewish public opinion.”
People for Peace Now praised Amnesty’s human rights advocacy, but in addition suggested the group to remain inside the normative bounds of a human rights watchdog.
“Amnesty Worldwide performs an vital function in documenting human rights violations worldwide, not in deciphering public opinion or in prescribing the collective dialog inside America’s Jewish neighborhood,” Ori Nir, the group’s spokesman, stated in an e mail.
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