Amnesty International’s international board has suspended its Israel branch for two years, starting immediately, the nonprofit told JNS on Tuesday.
The nonprofit’s board “considered Amnesty Israel’s failure to align itself fully with Amnesty International research and positions, and its public discrediting of Amnesty’s research undermining well-investigated findings for several years,” a spokesperson told JNS.
The Amnesty board also took the decision “due to evidence of endemic anti-Palestinian racism within Amnesty Israel, which violates core human rights principles and Amnesty values,” the spokesperson claimed. “Anti-Palestinian racism within Amnesty Israel has been denounced by a number of board members of Amnesty Israel since 2021, resulting in their resignations.”
“They have also taken to the media and social media to reject and condemn anti-Palestinian racism within Amnesty International Israel and beyond,” the spokesperson added.
Earlier on Tuesday, a staff member at Amnesty’s Israel branch, which was founded in 1964 and is one of the nonprofit’s oldest chapters, confirmed the suspension to JNS and denied that the Tel Aviv-based chapter’s actions were racist against Palestinians.
The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that Amnesty Israel consults with Arab and Jewish staffers about its statements and reports. The source didn’t say how Amnesty’s decision would affect the Tel Aviv-based organization’s day-to-day operations.
Amnesty Israel has reportedly been dissatisfied with its parent body’s lack of concern for Jewish terror victims. On Dec. 5, Amnesty released the 296-page report “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman,” noting “Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
The report accused Israel Defense Forces soldiers of “prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention—namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The Israeli branch, which is a legally independent organization, rejected the claims that Jerusalem is perpetrating genocide in the Strip.
“Our careful analysis does not find that the findings meet the definition of genocide, as carefully formulated in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” it stated.
In 2022, Amnesty called Jerusalem’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs “apartheid,” a conclusion that staff members of Amnesty Israel called “problematic,” “flawed” and at risk of producing “an adverse effect.”
Officials in Jerusalem have previously said that Amnesty Israel has violated anti-boycott legislation by campaigning for arms embargoes and promoting a blacklist of Jewish villages in Judea and Samaria.
Last year, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich instructed the Israeli Tax Authority to launch a formal probe into tax benefits that the local Amnesty branch enjoys under Israeli law.
Smotrich’s office said it also took issue with the fact that 80% of the organization’s budget came from Amnesty’s global headquarters, which it said raised questions about its legal independence.
