WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Fourteen NGOs and human rights groups in the Israeli-occupied territories has signed a statement in support of Amnesty International, condemning the “vicious” attack on the rights group sparked by the recent publication of a report which labeled the Zionist regime an apartheid regime.
B’Tselem, HaMakod, Adalah, Breaking the Silence, the Israeli Centre for Public Affairs, Physicians for Human Rights, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Yesh Din, are amongst the 14 signatories to the statement issued in support of Amnesty.
The 14 rights groups said that they were “gravely concerned” by the vicious attack on Amnesty. In their statement the groups stressed that they too have documented, verified and confronted the “ongoing injustice, inequality and violations of human rights and international law that Israel perpetrates against the Palestinians.”
“Many of us have used the term and/or have made the legal designation of ‘apartheid’ in relations to various aspects of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians,” the statement continued.
The groups explained that the allegation of anti-Semitism was especially concerning. “Many of the most pre-eminent scholars of Jewish life, history and persecution have warned that the struggle against anti-Semitism in the world is being weakened by the unbearable, inaccurate and instrumentalized use to which the anti-Semitism accusation is lodged.” They claimed that this was being done for political ends and in order to avoid the debate about the Zionist regime’s oppressive policies towards the Palestinians.
“Attempts to distract from the violations and to avoid substantive debate by hurling spurious accusations is the standard and ongoing practice of successive Israeli cabinets and their echo-chambers overseas,” the statement said.
“Israel is not being held to a different standard,” the groups said, adding that the “Israeli regime apparently wants to be held to no standard at all. The statement points out that it is not a coincidence that the major human rights groups including Human Rights Watch (HRW) have turned their attention to the occupying regime because of its “systematic and structural regime of discrimination and inequality.”
The groups urged the Zionist regime to “stop its oppressive discriminatory practices and its dangerous game of defamation and disinformation.”
Meanwhile, Yemeni Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf Abdullah has warned about the danger of the participation of the Zionist regime in U.S.-led naval drills to be held in the Red Sea next week.
Yemen’s top diplomat sounded the alarm on Wednesday, saying the upcoming military activities are of suspicious nature to be held under the guise of the U.S.-led International Maritime Exercise (IMX).
In a statement, carried by Yemen’s official Saba News Agency, Sharaf Abdullah warned of the consequences of the region slipping into an arena of conflict and new international military alliances under the pretext of combating terrorism and piracy and boosting regional security.
He said there are suspicious agendas that in reality exist and schemes to turn the Red Sea region and the Arabian Sea into an area of direct and proxy conflict.