Sir, – It is not surprising that Betty Purcell (Letters, February 2nd) praises Amnesty International's latest diatribe against Israel, which is referred to as an "apartheid state".
Amnesty International used to be a highly respected organisation that was objective, balanced and concerned with individual human rights abuses. Unfortunately, in recent times it has become colonised by radical activists pursuing a far-left agenda. Israel, as an ally of the United States, is one of this organisation’s main targets.
Its latest report on Israel is grossly defamatory. It relies heavily on tainted “evidence” and testimony from groups and organisation that are strongly anti-Israel; some such groups have links to armed terrorists.
The reality is that Israel is the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, the only country in the region with equality under the law for all its citizens (a fifth of whom are Arabs), freedom of speech, press, assembly, as well as the only country in the region with equality for women and the LGBTQ community.
:fill(white):background_color(white)/static.themebuilder.aws.arc.pub/irishtimes/1647534191476.png)
The same cannot be said for any Muslim country in the region, but of course Amnesty has nothing to say about them.
One-third of deputies in Israel’s parliament are women, a fifth are immigrants, and Israel’s current government includes ministers who are Arabs, immigrants, and activists from the disabled and LGBTQ communities.
Some “apartheid”!
Amnesty does not condemn Syria, where the regime has murdered half a million of its own citizens, or Iran where homosexuals and the Baha’i community are ruthlessly oppressed. Nor does it mention that Hamas does not allow any Jews into Gaza, nor that the Palestinian Authority has made it clear it does not want any Israelis in a future sovereign Palestinian state.
Instead, once again, Amnesty pours poisonous vitriol on Israel, the only largely Jewish country in the world.
As Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid has observed: one has to wonder why Amnesty has such an ideological obsession with demonising the Jewish State. – Yours, etc,
Dr DEREK O’FLYNN,
Press Officer,
Embassy of Israel,
Dublin 4.