Amnesty International has a report that was released to coincide with this hunger strike, yet not one of the prisoners’ demands are listed by Amnesty as being a violation of international law. (Amnesty does claim that having the prisons in Israel instead of the territories is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, but relocating the prisons is not one of the prisoner demands. One can imagine the outcry if Israel would build prisons in the territories!)
What may be more interesting was Amnesty’s choice to highlight this pull quote in their report:
Since the title of the report is “Israel must end ‘unlawful and cruel’ policies towards Palestinian prisoners,” anyone glancing at this page and this featured quote would assume that a prisoner is claiming that Israel is torturing them. An unsubstantiated quote of that sort would be egregious enough if that is what this was.
But if you bother to look at the nearly unreadable grayed-out source, you see that this accusation of “torture” is not by a prisoner, but from a prisoner’s sister, saying that Israeli restrictions on her visiting her brother is “torture” and punishment.
It is obvious that calling restrictions on unlimited visits “torture” is ludicrous. To highlight that accusation as a key takeaway in the report is massively deceptive.
Clearly, Amnesty had next to nothing to accuse Israel of, and instead it went to its usual Plan B, to quote anonymous people who accuse Israel of horrible things without Amnesty having to actually verify anything. It pushes lies and propaganda while avoiding lying outright.
Just another reason that Amnesty has no credibility as a moral force.
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