Why I resigned as chairman of Amnesty Israel
Israeli human rights groups can’t advocate for Palestinians without Palestinians.
Amnesty International officers present the group’s new report alleging genocide by Israel in Gaza on Dec. 4. Photo by Pierre Crom/Getty Images
After Amnesty International released a report last Thursday calling the war in Gaza a genocide, Amnesty’s Israeli branch quickly issued a statement saying most of its members don’t believe genocide has occurred. Some in Amnesty Israel alleged the report was biased, arguing for a forgone conclusion. Others went further, claiming that the international movement abandoned its commitment to equality in the first place.
But even before the report came out — one week before, to be exact — I resigned my position as chair of the board of Amnesty Israel. I didn’t step down because of the imminent controversy over the conclusions of Amnesty International’s report. I resigned because I could no longer chair a branch that did not treat Palestinians as equal partners, and I could not sign off on a critique of Amnesty International’s report that pretends to be an expert minority opinion, but is instead little more than the expression of an Israeli-Jewish worldview, to the exclusion of Palestinian voices.
Let’s start with the Amnesty International report itself. It was written by a diverse set of legal experts, and was revised multiple times to adhere to stricter standards of proof. It is far from the first report prepared by legal experts to reach the conclusion that genocide occurred, but it is by far the most in-depth legal analysis on the issue. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the report’s conclusions, the critique of it ought to be the kind that is commanded by serious scholarship.
Amnesty Israel’s position on the report was prepared by two Israeli Jewish staff members who are not legal scholars, with external assistance from Israeli legal experts. What Amnesty Israel was lacking in legal expertise it could have perhaps offered with an analysis that is instead rich in its diversity of perspective, having had Palestinian staff and board members working together with the Israeli Jewish ones to write something truly unique on this issue and contribute a perspective that would be difficult for outside experts to replicate. But instead, no Palestinians had any input on Amnesty Israel’s analysis of the genocide report.
This isn’t because there were no Palestinians present. Amnesty Israel had skilled Palestinian staff and board members ready to contribute. It wasn’t because the Palestinians in Amnesty Israel have no legal expertise — after all, the Israeli staff doesn’t either. It’s because, as Palestinian activists and scholars Haneen Maikey and Lana Tatour have pointed out, a common pattern in progressive Israeli spaces is that Palestinians can provide labor, translation, lived experience and trauma to feed the analysis of Israeli Jews, but cannot be equal partners who get to do the analysis side by side and set the agenda together.
Amnesty Israel finds itself in the awkward position of being neither a source of legal expertise, nor providing a diverse human rights perspective of Israelis and Palestians. It is just another place for Israeli Jews to express themselves.
When I became chairman of Amnesty Israel in January 2024, there were no Palestinians on the board of managers or in managerial positions on staff. By way of comparison, this is a lower standard than the one found in Israeli public service and government-owned corporations, which are, according to the attorney general’s guidelines, at least obligated to have a proper representation of Arabs “in all ranks and professions, in every office and auxiliary unit,” including the board of directors.
I insisted on Palestinian representation in managerial roles, but nothing changed. Members of management and the board were reluctant to make the necessary structural adjustments. Staff told me that there was a rule that says a Palestinian staff member must be consulted on issues pertaining to Palestinians, something Amnesty Israel pointed out in their defense recently.
However, staff also informed me that frequent arguments resulted from this rule not being applied, and it was certainly not applied to Amnesty Israel’s analysis for its position on the genocide report. Ironically, this pattern of defending oneself by citing a rule that isn’t enforced mirrors the IDF’s approach, where it would promise “tightening of regulations” after a human rights violation, with little change following.
Two Palestinian board members joined during my tenure, and left shortly after one of them was told in a meeting that her opinions are evidence of a lack of experience and therefore she is unfit to be on the board. In addition, staff repeatedly ignored her pleas to include Palestinian voices in official decisions. A board member from before my time pointed out in a tweet that Amnesty Israel seems unable to retain Palestinians.
I must stress here that I do not intend to smear anyone, and I deeply respect and care for many of my colleagues in Amnesty Israel. But when injustice persists, whether through direct enforcement, indifference, or inertia, staying silent will simply keep it in place. Treating Palestinians, or any other group, as tokens, rubber stamps, or just labor instead of equal, agenda-setting partners is unacceptable, especially in a progressive space.
The desire among some Israelis to express positions on human rights that are unburdened by the analysis and worldview of those who actually experience those human rights violations replicates the outside Israeli system inside the world of human rights activists. If we are to win the fight for a peace that is based on human rights, justice, and equality, we must overcome this mindset. If you are advocating on behalf of Palestinians, but exclude them as equals at the table, find another cause.
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