Why is the State Department still taking Amnesty International seriously?
Amnesty International’s latest report defining Israel as an "apartheid" state since its founding has stirred up controversy.
On the substance, the group is wrong, as Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid and U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch have eloquently shown. The group’s methodology is also flawed. After the release of the report, Lazar Berman, the Times of Israel’s diplomatic correspondent, interviewed
Such statements are welcome, but if the State Department is serious and truly believes the Amnesty report is a calumny, then it should reevaluate its relationship with Amnesty International entirely.
The State Department regularly cites Amnesty International reports and research in its own annual human rights reports. The latest report sticking the apartheid label on Israel is not the first time Amnesty has allowed a subjective political agenda to trump objective analysis.
Amnesty International, for example, advocated for Mohammed Al Roken, who sought the violent overthrow of the United Arab Emirates’s government. Roken also endorsed a statement by the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, an organization founded by designated al Qaeda financier Abd al Rahman al Nuaimi, that declared, "The Muslim ummah — in this era — is facing a vicious aggression from the powers of tyranny and injustice, from the Zionist power and the American administration led by the extreme right, which is working to achieve control over nations and peoples, and is stealing their wealth, and annihilating their will, and changing their educational curriculums and social orders."
When I then criticized Amnesty International for its association and cherry-picking, its researcher Mansoureh Mills, whom I have never met, suggested to a Qatar-funded outlet that the UAE had paid me. (For the record, I have never received money from a foreign state or its proxies, though I have received money from the U.S. government for various contract research on unrelated issues).
When I challenged Mills for evidence, she deleted her tweet. That whole episode, however, underscored how sloppy Amnesty standards and research are and how individual animus trumps rigor. Such sloppiness now casts doubts on Mills’s research on Iran: It is unclear whether she shoots from the hip or works to confirm her accusations.
Likewise, after the murder of a prominent dissident, Amnesty International apparently self-censored its work on Muammar Gadhafi’s Libya in order to preserve access to that country. The group also ignored international legal precedent in order to condemn the arrest of Paul Rusesabagina, the hotelier made famous in Hotel Rwanda, who later began funding terrorism. In this case, it is hard not to conclude that Amnesty believes in different standards of international law depending upon whether the subject is black or white.
There is also internal hypocrisy: After Gaetan Mootoo, a 30-year employee, chastised Amnesty in his suicide note, the group paid compensation to his family but demandedthey keep the settlement private. Nor was his the first suicide attributed to the group’s toxic culture.
Amnesty International once did good work and filled an important watchdog role. Unfortunately, it has long since proved itself sloppy and subjective, motivated more by the partisan lens of its leaders and researchers and less by objective standards of international and humanitarian law.
It is long past time the State Department cease treating it as a credible source for human rights research in its reports.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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