Amnesty International: Israel Shouldn't Exist

Amnesty International Says Israel Shouldn’t Exist

Daniel Greenfield

The second stage of mainstreaming radical ideas is saying the quiet part out loud. When it comes to Israel, that means beginning to dispense with the pretense that hostility toward the Jewish State has anything to do with the liberation of captured territories during the Six Day War in 1967.

Or, for that matter, that it even has anything to do with ’48 and the ways in which the modern State of Israel was reborn.

Lenin, and Communists and hard lefties in general opposed Zionism long before there was any such issue. And they opposed it because their ideology stated that the Jews were not a legitimate people, certainly not a legitimate nationality, and that once freed from “persecution”, they would be safe from antisemitism and disappear. We all know how that worked out, but the anti-Israel crowd, from Beinart to Amnesty International are all pushing the same kool-aid.

In a refreshing bit of honesty, Amnesty International is saying the quiet part out loud.

Following Amnesty International’s recent report that accused Israel of “apartheid” in its treatment of Palestinians, the group’s USA director appeared to go a step further on Wednesday, suggesting to a Women’s National Democratic Club audience that the bulk of American Jews do not want Israel to be a Jewish state, but rather “a safe Jewish space” based on “core Jewish values.”

That’s an indirectly direct way of saying that Israel should not exist. Which indeed is what Amnesty International and much of the Left believe.

The Amnesty official rejected a 2020 survey conducted by the Ruderman Family Foundation that found that eight in 10 Jewish Americans identify as “pro-Israel,” and two-thirds feel emotionally “attached” or “very attached” to the Jewish state.

“I actually don’t believe that to be true,” O’Brien said regarding those figures. “I believe my gut tells me that what Jewish people in this country 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.” 

The gut of O’Brien speaks.

Rather than a Jewish state, American Jews want “a safe Jewish space,” O’Brien continued. “I think they can be convinced over time that the key to sustainability is to adhere to what I see as core Jewish values, which are to be principled and fair and just in creating that space.”

The con here is a familiar one and ubiquitous in Jewish lefty circles. It replaces Jewish nationhood, survival and existence with “Jewish values”, and by that lefties invariably means lefty values because they neither know anything about Judaism and care even less about it.

To O’Brien, Jewish values are those of Amnesty International, which means that American Jews should support destroying Israel.

Israel “shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state,” O’Brien told some 20 in-person and 30 virtual attendees at the Wednesday lunch event, before adding “Amnesty takes no political views on any question, including the right of the State of Israel to survive.”

Israel shouldn’t exist, but his organization has no view on the question of whether Israel has the right to exist, even though its position has been made abundantly clear.