The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing more than 2,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis in American public policy, blasted Amnesty International’s new report, “‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza,” as antisemitic propaganda akin to that which led to the murder of six million Jews less than a century ago.
In a post to X, CJV’s managing director Rabbi Yaakov Menken outlined numerous “obvious lies” packed into the report, which, in its opening sentence, tells readers, that on Oct. 7, 2023 “Israel embarked on a military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip (Gaza) of unprecedented magnitude, scale and duration.”
Amnesty International inverted the victim and murderous attacker. The military offensive of Oct. 7 was the unprovoked attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Only weeks later did Israel enter Gaza in response to the vicious Hamas pogrom which included rapes, kidnappings, beheadings of babies and mass murder.
Only much later in its report does Amnesty acknowledge the mass murder of Israelis that started the war, and Amnesty never directly credits Hamas with the rapes that Hamas proudly live-streamed.
Further, despite Amnesty’s allegations, Gaza was not “occupied.” Israel left Gaza in 2005, forcibly removing thousands of Jews from their homes. Amnesty never notes, much less objects to, this act of ethnic cleansing. Instead, it ludicrously asserts that a region utterly Judenrein except for victims of kidnapping was “occupied” by Israel.
Finally, and most critically, Amnesty deliberately mischaracterizes Israel’s military effort to free the hostages and remove the threat that Hamas poses as “genocide.” It is obviously false and libelous to assert that Israel is committing “genocide” when all fighting will cease the moment Hamas surrenders and releases the hostages.
“Amnesty clearly accused Israel of ‘genocide’ in order to cover for the openly-genocidal Hamas agenda and to demonize Israel for forcing the surrender of this terrorist organization,” said CJV Israel regional vice president Rabbi Steven Pruzansky. “The report stoops to a level of hatred and bigotry worthy of the Nazi era.
“Far from being a human rights group, Amnesty International is providing material support to a foreign terror organization—one that openly hopes to implement Hitler’s Final Solution,” Pruzansky said. “It is clear that supporting Amnesty today is tantamount to directly supporting that hateful and genocidal cause.”