Occupied Palestine (The Inside Palestine)- ‘Israel’ is edging towards stripping Amnesty International of its tax-exempt status following its new report on Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians.
The Israeli occupation parliament’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee is looking to consider rules that would strip Amnesty operations in Israel of tax-exempt status, according to the Israel Hayom newspaper.
The proposed measures were pushed through to this stage when on Saturday Gideon Saar, the occupation’s justice minister, gave the okay at the behest of Avigdor Lieberman, the finance minister.
‘Israel’ also sought to limit Amnesty’s access to platforms within the occupation state by using a law that targets those who boycott or issue statements urging others to boycott ‘Israel’.
The newspaper reported that the right-wing organization Btsalmo is the one who called on Lieberman to drop Amnesty International’s tax-exempt status in ‘Israel’.
Amnesty International said in a new report that Israel’ is carrying out “the crime of apartheid against Palestinians” and must be held accountable for treating them as “an inferior racial group”.
Released on Tuesday, the 278-page report by the leading rights group details how Israeli occupation authorities enforce a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinians.
The damning investigation sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system “which amounts to apartheid under international law.”
Amnesty said that this system is maintained by violations which the rights group found to “constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.”
Amnesty International has also called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the “crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT” and called on all states to “exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.”
On Monday, one day before Amnesty International issued its report, ‘Israel’ called on the group not to publish the report, saying the conclusions of the London-based international human rights group are “false, biased and antisemitic.”
In a statement issued that day, Israeli occupation Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that Amnesty “is just another radical organization which echoes propaganda, without seriously checking the facts,” and that it “echoes the same lies shared by terrorist organizations.”
“Israel isn’t perfect, but we are a democracy committed to international law, open to criticism, with a free press and a strong and independent judicial system,” Lapid claimed.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry also said in a statement that Amnesty’s report “denies the state of Israel’s right to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people.”
“Its extremist language and distortion of historical context were designed to demonize Israel and pour fuel onto the fire of antisemitism,” it added.
A year ago, B’Tselem drew criticism from Israeli politicians when it asserted that Israeli policies had been designed to enforce “Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch in April last year became the first significant international rights group to publicly level the allegation of apartheid.
Source: QNN
English