Jerusalem, 13 March, 2022 (TPS) — Amnesty International USA Executive Director Paul O’Brien has declared that Israel “shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state,” drawing fire from Israel and several organizations.
O’Brien spoke at a lunch event hosted by the Women’s National Democratic Club on Wednesday and said that “Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people,” the Jewish Insider (JI) reported.
Responding to the statement, Israel’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lior Haiat said Friday that O’Brien “reveals the true face of the organization, calling for the elimination of the nation-state of the Jewish people.”
Amnesty International released a 280-page report last month calling Israel an apartheid state, charging it with crimes against humanity, and questioning the Jewish state’s right to exist.
“The truth out in the open along with Amnesty’s obsession and hate for the only country with a Jewish majority. There’s a name for this hate…,” he said on Twitter, alluding to anti-Semitism.
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt stated in response that weeks after Amnesty’s “outrageous report attacking Israel’s legitimacy,” O’Brien “shamelessly and bizarrely tries to explain why most Jews don’t really feel attached to Israel and argues Israel shouldn’t be a Jewish state.”
“Your obsessive, relentless focus on Israel, and the erasure of the Jewish right to self-determination illustrates a dangerous degree of bias. Both Amnesty and O’Brien owe the Jewish community an apology. Moreover, ADL would be happy to offer anti-Semitism education for Amnesty if you’re willing to engage in a bit of introspection and endeavor to improve. ”
O’Brien claimed that “my gut tells me that what Jewish people in this country [US] want is to know that there’s a sanctuary that is a safe and sustainable place that the Jews, the Jewish people can call home,” according to the JI report.
“Thanks but no thanks, we don’t need you to jew-splain what our community should think or feel, even as you dismiss thousands of years of history,” Greenblatt responded. “You and Amnesty ignore clear evidence of overwhelming support among Jews for Zionism and the democratic and Jewish state.”
Jay Ruderman, President of the Ruderman Foundation, tweeted that O’Brien dismissed a survey of 2,500 American Jews that they overwhelmingly support Israel, saying “‘his gut’ tells him otherwise dismisses verified data.”
“If Amnesty dismisses American facts, how can we trust their reports?” he asked.
Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said that O’Brien “comes out of the closet as a crusader against Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state. Thank you for sparing us all the pretense that the Amnesty report is anything other than an ideological hit job.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned O’Brien’s statements, and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean and Global Social Action Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Amnesty International “should be listed as a hate group.”
“At a time when one sovereign nation is being crushed [Ukraine], its US director wants to eliminate the one Jewish state, a democracy with over 9 million citizens, and a safe haven for endangered Jews. They are dedicated to the same goal as Hamas,” Cooper added.
Professor Gerald Steinberg, of NGO Monitor, pointed out that the founder of Amnesty International, Peter Benenson, “was a Zionist” and that “his mother Flora Solomon was a major force in the Zionist movement.”
Now the head of Amnesty USA O’Brien “sells anti-Zionist anti-Semitic hate, like many in this morally corrupt NGO.”
